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THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE- 

BIBLE. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  the 
divine  origin  of  the  Bible,  as  taught  by  Calvin  and  by  the 
Reformed  and  Lutheran  theologians  of  the  succeeding 
century,  has  fallen  into  an  almost  complete  neglect.  This 
is  partly  due  to  the  error  of  identifying  the  Witness  of  the 
Spirit  with  the  argument  from  Christian  experience  which 
is  much  used  in  modern  Apologetics,  but  is  also  partly  due 
to  a  mistaken  mystical  conception  of  its  nature,  and  to  the 
influence  of  the  prevalent  antisupernaturalism  upon 
modern  theological  thought.  It  is  worth  while,  therefore, 
to  consider  the  nature,  object,  and  apologetic  value  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  to  Scripture. 

It  should  be  noted  at  the  outset  that  this  is  not  an  isolated 
truth,  but  a  part  of  the  saving  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in 
the  application  of  Redemption,  and  that  therefore  it  is 
closely  related  to  the  whole  organism  of  Scripture  truth.  It 
is  one  aspect  of  the  question  as  to  the  efficient  cause  and 
the  ground  of  saving  faith.  It  has,  therefore,  certain  pre¬ 
suppositions  which  were  clearly  recognized  and  stated,  es¬ 
pecially  by  Calvin  and  by  most  of  the  great  theologians, 
both  Lutheran  and  Reformed,  of  the  succeeding  century. 
The  chief  of  these  presuppositions  is  that  God  can  be  known 
only  by  revelation.  This  is  true  of  our  natural  knowledge 
of  God.  The  origin  and  development  of  our  knowledge  of 
God  is  not  a  realization  of  God’s  self-consciousness  in  man, 
as  pantheism  conceives  it;  but  is  due  to  the  self-revealing 
act  on  God’s  part  in  Creation  by  which  He  has  made  Him¬ 
self  manifest,  creating  man  with  a  religious  nature  capable 
of  seeing  God  in  the  works  of  His  hands. 

Furthermore,  faith  is  conviction  of  truth  grounded  on 
evidence.  In  this  broad  sense  it  is  not  distinguished  from 
knowledge.  Its  distinctive  feature  is  that  in  faith  the  evi- 


42 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


dence  is  not  that  of  self-consciousness  or  reason,  but  con¬ 
sists  in  a  testimony  external  or  objective  to  our  conscious¬ 
ness.  Religious  faith,  therefore,  must  be  grounded  in  the 
testimony  of  God.  This  is  true  in  reference  to  the  knowl¬ 
edge  of  God  obtained  from  general  revelation  in  Nature 
and  man.  We  must  rely  on  God’s  witness  to  Himself  in 
the  heart  and  in  His  Creation.  This  is  just  as  true  of  a 
true  or  saving  faith  in  God’s  Word. 

In  addition  to  this,  it  must  be  remembered  that  sin,  ob¬ 
scuring  and  distorting  our  natural  knowledge  of  God,  and 
darkening  man’s  heart  or  mind,  has  rendered  him  incapable 
of  seeing  God  in  His  works,  and  no  less  incapable  of  truly 
seeing  Him  in  the  special  revelation  in  Scripture  by  which 
He  has  restored  and  completed  His  revelation  of  Himself. 
There  is  need,  therefore,  of  a  complete  renewal  and  illumi¬ 
nation  of  the  sinner  in  order  to  the  exercise  of  saving  faith 
in  God  and  in  His  Word.  Saving  faith,  like  all  truly  re¬ 
ligious  faith,  must  rest  on  God’s  testimony  and  presupposes 
man’s  capacity  to  recognize  the  testimony  as  from  God. 

It  is  in  accordance  with  these  fundamental  truths  that  the 
old  Protestant  theologians  asserted  that  the  Bible  is  its  own 
witness  because  God  speaks  in  it.  This  is  not  reasoning  in 
a  circle.  It  does  not  mean  that  we  believe  the  Bible  to  be 
of  God  because  God  says  so  in  it,  and  we  believe  that  it  is 
He  who  says  so  because  the  Bible  is  His  word.  It  means 
simply  that  the  Bible  is  self-witnessing;  that  it  bears  in 
itself  the  marks  of  its  divine  origin  if  we  have  the  eye  of 
faith  to  see  them.  This  can  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  the 
Bible  demands  faith  from  every  one  to  whom  it  comes  with 
its  message.  Its  demand  for  faith  is  not  limited  to  those 
capable  of  weighing  the  external  evidence  for  its  divine 
origin.  The  ground  of  such  faith,  therefore,  must  be  ulti¬ 
mately  the  self-evidencing  character  of  the  Bible.  It  follows 
also  from  what  has  been  said,  and  it  was  fully  recognized 
by  the  old  Protestant  theologians,  that  doubt  or  unbelief 
as  to  the  divine  origin  and  authority  of  Scripture,  is  not 
due  to  any  deficiency  in  or  want  of  objective  evidence,  but 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  43 

S 

to  the  condition  of  heart  of  sinful  man.  This  is  not  only 
the  teaching  of  Scripture,  it  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
same  evidence  for  the  Bible  which  convinces  one  man,  fails 
to  convince  another,  and  by  the  further  fact  that  the  same 
amount  of  evidence  may  fail  to  convince  a  man  at  one  time 
and  yet  later  produce  a  complete  conviction. 

All  these  truths  are  taught  in  Scripture  as  well  as  by 
experience.  Sin  with  its  obscuration  of  our  religious  knowl¬ 
edge  is  conceived  of  as  a  power  of  darkness  which  rules 
over  this  sinful  world,  and  the  Gospel  revelation  by  con¬ 
trast  is  called  light.  This  contrast  is  always  represented 
as  fundamental  and  ineradicable  by  natural  means  so  that 
the  transition  from  darkness  to  light  is  only  by  means  of 
supernatural  revelation  and  supernatural  illumination. 
Darkness,  then,  in  the  Old  Testament  is  not  only  used  in 
a  quasi-objective  sense  to  depict  the  misery,  estrangement 
from  God,  and  want  of  all  true  knowledge  of  God  which 
characterized  the  world  before  the  advent  of  Christ  and  the 
revelation  of  God  which  He  made,  so  that  Christ’s  coming 
was  a  light  to  the  world  (Isa.  ix.  i  [2]  ;  lx.  2),  but  also 
expresses  the  ignorance  or  spiritual  blindness  of  sinful  man 
apart  from  inward  illumination  (Job  v.  14;  xxxvii.  19). 
This  is  not  a  mere  absence  of  light,  nor  a  merely  negative 
use  of  the  term  darkness,  as  where  it  represents  the  essential 
unknowableness  of  God  (Deut.  v.  22 ;  Psa.  xcvii.  2),  but  is  a 
positive  condition  of  the  wicked  (1  Sam.  ii.  9),  and  a  penal 
infliction  (Deut.  xxviii.  29;  Job.  v.  14). 

In  the  New  Testament  we  find  the  same  quasi-objective 
use  of  the  term  to  express  the  dense  ignorance  of  God  which 
spreads  over  the  earth  apart  from  the  revelation  of  God  in 
Christ  and  the  light  of  the  Gospel,  so  that  Christ  is  the 
light  of  the  world,  and  the  Gospel  a  light  which  shines  in 
a  dark  place  (Jn.  i.  5 ;  2  Pet.  i.  19  etc.),  and  also  the  same 
subjective  sense  of  the  term  which  denotes  the  spiritual 
blindness  of  the  sinner.  In  the  teaching  of  Jesus  as  re¬ 
corded  in  the  Synoptists,  the  term  is  most  frequently  used 
in  an  eschatological  sense  to  denote  the  mental  and  spiritual 


44 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


condition  of  those  in  the  state  of  future  punishment.  In 
the  Gospel  of  John,  however,  it  is  a  term  denoting  the 
dense  ignorance  which  is  totally  unable  to  see  the  divine 
revelation  of  light  which  has  always  shone  and  still  shines 
into  it  from  the  Logos  and  from  the  Incarnate  Word 
(Jn.  i.  5).  In  this  sense  Christ  is  come  as  a  light  into  the 
darkness  of  the  world  (Jn.  xii.  46).  But  the  condition  of 
spiritual  blindness  of  the  individual  apart  from  the  inward 
spiritual  illumination  which  Jesus  gives,  is  set  forth  when 
a  walk  in  darkness  is  contrasted  with  possession  of  the  light 
of  life.  Here  the  light  is  that  by  which  true  life  is  ob¬ 
tained.  It  is  the  life-giving  inward  light  which  Jesus  gives 
the  darkened  soul.  And  by  contrast  the  darkness  is  spiritual 
blindness  (Jn.  viii.  12).  Paul  also  uses  the  term  darkness 
to  denote  the  spiritual  blindness  of  the  natural  man.  Be¬ 
fore  God  creatively  illuminates  the  mind,  this  darkness  is  as 
dense  as  that  of  the  outer  world  at  Creation  before  God  said 
“let  there  be  light”  (2  Cor.  iv.  6).  It  is  therefore  repre¬ 
sented  as  a  power  which  has  authority  to  rule  over  men  and 
from  which  God  must  deliver  them  (Col.  i.  13).  It  affects 
man’s  whole  understanding  or  mind  so  that  the  Gentiles 
are  described  as  darkened  in  their  understanding.  In  this 
state  they  are  alienated  from  God,  and  this  is  due  to  the 
ignorance  and  hardness  of  heart  which  always  accompany 
this  darkness  or  spiritual  blindness  (Eph.  iv.  17,  18).  It 
is,  therefore,  a  spiritual  blindness  due  to  sin,  and  is  so 
characteristic  of  the  condition  of  the  natural  man  that  Paul 
describes  the  former  condition  of  his  readers  absolutely  as 
darkness  (Eph.  v.  8).  This  is  a  condition  of  hardness  or 
stubborn  resistance  of  the  truth  of  the  Gospel,  a  condition 
of  blindness  wrought  by  sin  (Eph.  iv.  18;  2  Cor.  iv.  4). 
According  to  Peter  this  is  a  condition  out  of  which  man  can 
come  to  the  light  of  the  Gospel  only  by  an  effectual  call 
from  God  (1  Pet.  ii.  9). 

In  consequence  of  this  spiritual  blindness  the  natural 
man  i.e.  the  unregenerate  man,  is  unable  to  receive  the 
revelation  made  by  the  Spirit  through  the  Apostles  ( 1  Cor. 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  45 

ii.  i4ff).  In  this  context  Paul  says  that  he  relied  for  success 
in  his  preaching  of  the  Gospel,  not  on  man’s  wisdom,  but 
on  the  demonstration  of  the  Spirit,  in  order  that  the  faith 
of  the  Corinthians  might  not  rest  on  the  wisdom  of  man,  but 
on  the  power  of  God.  The  reason  for  this  is  because  the 
unregenerate  man  does  not  receive  the  things  of  the  Spirit, 
and  cannot  receive  them  because  they  are  spiritually  dis¬ 
cerned.  The  regenerate  man,  on  the  other  hand,  does 
receive  these  things,  and  the  reason  for  this  is  that  the 
former  has  not  and  the  latter  has  spiritual  insight  or  dis¬ 
cernment.  Moreover  Paul  here  teaches  that  this  spiritual 
discernment  consists  in  the  apprehension  of  the  religious 
value,  truth,  and  divine  origin  of  the  doctrines  dis¬ 
cerned,  and  that  it  is  due  to  the  operation  of  the  Spirit 
of  God  upon  the  heart.  And  in  the  preceding  chapter  the 
Apostle  asserts  that  the  very  same  Gospel  with  the  same 
amount  of  external  attestation,  was  an  offense  to  the  Jew 
and  foolishness  to  the  Greeks,  but  to  those  who  were  in¬ 
wardly  and  effectually  called  it  was  the  wisdom  and  the 
power  of  God  (i  Cor.  i.  23,  24).  Hence,  as  we  have  seen, 
if  this  Gospel  be  hid  i.e.  its  truth  and  saving  efficacy  un¬ 
recognized,  it  is  not  for  lack  of  evidence,  but  because  men 
are  lost  and  blinded  by  sin  (2  Cor.  iv.  4). 

Consequently  one  important  aspect  of  the  work  of  Re¬ 
generation  is  an  illuminating  action  of  God’s  Spirit  on 
man’s  heart  or  mind,  removing  the- spiritual  blindness.  In 
the  earlier  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  it  is  the  work  of 
God’s  Spirit  as  the  source  of  life  in  the  cosmos  and  of  su¬ 
pernatural  power  in  the  theocratic  leaders,  that  is  most 
prominent.  In  the  Psalms  and  Isaiah,  however,  the  Spirit 
of  God  is  represented  as  dwelling  in  the  individual  believer 
as  the  source  of  an  ethical  change.  This  is  clearly  the  case 
in  Psa.  li.  where  David  prays  for  the  creation  of  a  new 
heart  and  the  renewal  of  a  right  spirit  within  him,  and 
prays  God  not  to  take  the  Spirit  of  Holiness  from  him. 
The  Holy  Spirit  was  present  in  Israel  through  Moses  so 
that  in  their  rebelliousness  they  grieved  Him  (Isa.  Ixiii. 


46  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

i of).  This  inward  work  and  presence  of  God’s  Spirit, 
I  however,  is  chiefly  characteristic  of  the  Messianic  times. 
The  new  Church  is  to  be  a  spiritual  Church  (Isa.  xliv.  3; 
lix.  21 ;  Ezek.  xxxix.  29),  His  continued  presence  being  the 
great  blessing  of  the  coming  Messianic  age  (Isa.  lix.  21). 
He  is  the  source  of  spiritual  life  to  God’s  people  (Ezek. 
xxxvii.  14),  and  His  universal  outpouring  and  influence 
will  mark  the  Messianic  age  (Joel  ii.  28-32 ).1  In  all  this, 
however,  the  illuminating  activity  of  the  Spirit  in  removing 
the  blindness  due  to  sin  is  not  specifically  mentioned.  But 
that  this  is  part  of  the  saving  work  of  God  in  man’s  heart 
is  made  perfectly  clear  where  the  Psalmist  prays  that.  God 
will  illumine  his  eyes  lest  he  sleep  the  sleep  of  death  (Psa. 
xiii.  4  [3]),  and  especially  where  he  prays  that  God  would 
open  his  eyes  that  he  might  behold  wondrous  things  out  of 
His  law  (Psa.  cxix.  18)  ;  so  that,  though  he  believed  that  the 
entrance  of  God’s  word  gives  light  to  the  soul  (verse  130), 
this  can  only  be  through  the  opening  of  the  blind  eyes. 
Hence  to  be  “taught  of  the  Lord”  (Isa.  liv.  13)  and  to 
“know  the  Lord”  ( Jer.  xxxi.  34)  refer  to  this  saving  knowl¬ 
edge  which  results  from  the  illuminating  work  of  God  in 
the  soul.  It  is  this  same  inward  work  of  spiritual  enlighten¬ 
ment  which  Isaiah  predicted  that  the  Messiah  would  ac¬ 
complish  for  His  people  (Isa.  xlii.  7),  and  which  was 
fulfilled  when  Jesus  came  as  the  Light  of  the  World. 

When  we  turn  to  the  New  Testament  we  find  that  this 
enlightening  work  of  the  Spirit  is  most  fully  developed, 
the  saving  work  of  the  Spirit  in  the  individual  being  char¬ 
acteristic  of  the  New  Testament  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
in  contrast  to  that  of  the  Old  Testament.  This  is  not  made 
explicit  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  though  they  evidently  con¬ 
tain  clear  intimations  of  this  truth.  Jesus’  miracles  of  heal¬ 
ing  were  more  than  signs  of  His  Messiahship  and  Deity; 
they  were  symbolical  of  His  power  to  heal  the  terrible  dis¬ 
ease  of  sin.  The  healing  of  the  blind  man  as  recorded  in 

1Oehler,  O.  T.  Theology,  pp.  507,  508;  B.  B.  Warfield,  “The  Spirit  of 
God  in  the  Old  Testament,”  Pres,  and  Ref.  Review.  VI,  pp.  665-687. 


\ 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  47 

Mark  and  Luke  teaches  the  supernatural  power  of  Jesus  to 
open  the  blind  eyes  of  the  soul  (Mk.  viii.  22-26;  Lk.  xviii. 
35-43).  In  the  latter  instance  (ver.  42)  the  answer  of  Jesus 
to  the  blind  man  that  his  faith  had  saved  him,  indicated  the 
deeper  than  physical  healing  that  the  Saviour  wrought.  An¬ 
other  indication  of  the  truth  that  mere  external  evidence 
will  not  convince  a  spiritually  blind  heart  is  seen  in  the  fact 
that  Jesus  would  do  no  mighty  works  to  convince  men  of 
His  claims  when  there  was  a  sinful  opposition  of  the  heart 
to  Himself.  Moreover  He  taught  in  the  Parable  of  the 
Rich  man  and  Lazarus  that  unbelief  in  reference  to  the  Old 
Testament  was  not  due  to  any  want  of  evidence,  nor  could 
it  be  removed  by  any  additional  external  proof  (Lk.  xvi. 
31).  The  knowledge  of  the  mysteries  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  is  not  a  natural  possession  of  man,  but  a  gift  of 
God  ( Mt.  xiii.  1 1 )  ;  and  the  same  thing  is  true  in  regard  to 
the  recognition  of  Jesus’  Messiahship  and  Deity,  as  our 
Lord’s  words  to  Peter  at  Caesarea  Philippi  clearly  show 
(Mt.  xvi.  17).  The  great  revealing  work  of  Christ,  as,  set 
forth  in  Mt.  xi.  25ff,  clearly  cannot  be  limited  to  the  revela¬ 
tion  of  God  in  Jesus’  Person  and  life  and  teaching,  but 
must  include  His  lifegiving  touch  on  the  sinner’s  heart  by 
which  alone  His  objective  revelation  of  God  is  made 
effective. 

It  is,  however,  in  our  Lord’s  teaching  as  recorded  in  the 
Gospel  of  John  that  this  truth  is  most  fully  and  richly  de¬ 
veloped.  In  the  earlier  chapters  the  Holy  Spirit  is  repre¬ 
sented  as  the  source  of  regeneration  and  spiritual  life.  But 
in  the  third  chapter  there  is  a  hint  that  this  involves  an 
enlightening  of  the  mind.  Nicodemus  says  that  he  knows 
that  Jesus  is  a  teacher  come  from  God,  and  it  was  in  reply 
to  this  statement  that  Jesus  set  forth  the  necessity  of  the 
new  birth  from  God’s  Spirit,  implying  that  a  true  recog¬ 
nition  of  Himself  as  a  teacher  is  possible  only  to  one  who 
is  born  anew  by  the  Spirit  (Jn.  iii.  3!!).  But  it  is  in  the 
fourteenth,  fifteenth,  and  sixteenth  chapters  that  the  re¬ 
vealing  and  enlightening  work  of  the  Spirit  is  most  fully 


48  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

expounded.  The  departure  of  Jesus  to  the  Father  is  as 
momentous  in  the  history  of  Redemption  as  was  His  Advent. 
His  revealing  and  saving  work,  He  teaches,  is  to  be  carried 
on  by  the  Spirit  who  is  “another  Paraclete”,  to  take  Christ’s 
place  and  carry  on  His  work;  or  more  accurately  Christ  is 
to  be  present  in  His  Church  by  the  Spirit,  especially  as  the 
Spirit  of  truth  (Jn.  xiv.  26;  xv.  26;  xvi.  I2ff).  The 
Spirit  is  to  glorify  Christ  by  completing  His  revelation, 
and  by  guiding  the  Church  into  all  truth.  These  promises 
include  not  only  the  completion  of  the  organism  of  special 
revelation  through  the  Apostolic  revelation,  but  also  the 
spiritual  illumination  of  the  Christian  Church  through  the 
ages.  It  is,  moreover,  “the  things  of  Christ”  and  not  new 
truths  which  are  the  object  of  the  Spirit’s  witness.  He  does 
not  speak  from  Himself  but  is  a  witness  to  the  truth  which 
is  Christ  Himself.  The  work  of  the  Spirit  in  this  respect,' 
therefore,  is  a  supernatural  one,  removing  the  blindness  of 
sin,  and  its  object  or  objective  content  is  the  “things  of 
Christ”  or  the  Gospel. 

Paul  develops  fully  this  teaching  of  Jesus.  Jesus  by 
His  Resurrection  becomes  the  exalted  Lord,  the  “quicken¬ 
ing  Spirit”  (Trvevfjui  £ cooiroiovv  1  Cor.  xv.  45),  and  the 
source  of  spiritual  light  as  well  as  life  (2  Cor.  iii.  i6f). 
According  to  Paul  neither  the  law  of  Moses  nor  even  the 
Gospel  of  Christ  can  remove  the  darkness  of  mind  due  to 
sin  (2  Cor.  iii.  12  ff).  When  the  Spirit  is  given  as  the 
power  of  a  new  supernatural  life,  then  it  is  light  within  as 
well  as  without.  The  Spirit  removes  the  veil  of  blindness 
on  the  sinner’s  heart.  In  the  fourth  chapter  this  same 
supernatural  power  is  referred  to  God.  This  is  to  empha¬ 
size  its  essentially  creative  nature.  God,  who  at  the  Creation 
when  the  world  was  in  physical  darkness,  said  “Light  shall 
shine  out  of  darkness”,  has  shined  in  the  same  creative  or 
supernatural  way  in  the  hearts  of  Christians,  so  that  they 
can  recognize  God’s  glory  in  Christ  (2  Cor.  iv.  6)  ;  which 
glory  shines  in  the  face  of  Christ  far  more  brightly  than  on 
Moses’  face  (iii.  7).  He  who  cannot  see  this  light  has  been 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  49 

blinded  by  sin  (iv.  3f )  so  that  the  failure  to  see  the  glorious 
light  is  not  due  to  defect  of  light  but  defect  of  vision.  Here 
'the  reference  is  probably  to  Paul’s  conversion,  but  not  ex¬ 
clusively  nor  to  what  was  peculiar  to  it;  but  rather  to  what 
is  common  to  all  believers  (ev  tcu<?  /capSccus  rjpiSiv),  In 
Gal.  i.  1 5 f  Paul  indeed  speaks  of  an  inner  revelation  of 
Christ  to  him,  but  here  he  refers  rather  to  his  authoritative 
knowledge  of  the  Gospel  which  he  had  as  an  Apostle,  as  is 
also  the  case  in  i  Cor.  ii.  io. 

The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  therefore  for  Paul  the  source 
not  only  of  spiritual  life  but  of  saving-  knowledge  of  the 
truth.  The  need  of  this  spiritual  illumination  according  to 
Paul,  as  we  saw,  lies  in  the  blindness  of  the  natural  man  to 
divine  things  (i  Cor.  ii.  6-16),  so  that  Christ  crucified  is 
foolishness  to  him  and  yet  the  power  of  God  to  those  effec¬ 
tually  called  (1  Cor.  i.  23f).  Moreover,  the  Spirit  which 
discloses  the  mystery  of  the  Gospel  to  the  Apostles  (Eph. 
iii.  5),  is  also  the  Spirit  who  illumines  all  Christians.  Where 
the  Spirit  comes,  therefore,  Christians  are  enlightened  in 
the  “eyes  of  their  heart”,  i.e.  spiritually  illumined,  to  know 
God  and  comprehend  their  glorious  hope  and  the  greatness 
of  God’s  power  in  them  (Eph.  i.  18-23).  The  prayer, 
moreover,  in  Eph.  iii.  16-19  for  strengthening  by  the 
Spirit  is  for  the  purpose  of  this  spiritual  knowledge.  The 
Gospel  is  a  mystery  i.e.  something  which  needs  to  be  dis¬ 
closed,  and  even  when  disclosed,  man,  who  is  blinded  by 
sin,  cannot  comprehend  it  until  he  has  been  spiritually  en¬ 
lightened.  This  great  truth  which  Paul  thus  fully  set  forth 
in  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians  and  Ephesians,  was  in  the 
Apostle’s  mind  from  the  first,  for  he  refers  to  the  same 
truth  in  his  earliest  Epistle  when  he  writes  that  his  Gospel 
came  to  the  Thessalonian  Christians  not  only  in  word  but 
in  power  and  in  the  Holy  Spirit  ( 1  Thess.  i.  5 ) . 

The  same  truth  is  taught  by  Peter.  It  is  true  that  he 
speaks  of  our  being  born  again  by  God’s  Word,  but  this  is 
only  a  familiar  figure  in  which  the  instrumental  cause  is 
spoken  of  as  if  it  were  the  efficient  cause  of  this  great 
change.  The  change  from  spiritual  darkness  to  spiritual 


50 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


light  is  clearly  affirmed  to  be  due  to  an  efficient  call  from 
God  (i  Pet.  ii.  9).  And  what  is  true  of  Peter  is  true  also 
of  John.  The  anointing  with  the  Holy  Spirit  gives  knowl¬ 
edge  (1  Jn.  ii.  20)  and  the  Spirit  continues  with  the  Chris¬ 
tian  as  a  guide  to  truth  (ii.  21).  It  is  by  the  Spirit  that  we 
know  that  Christ  abideth  in  us  (iii.  24;  iv.  13).  The  Spirit, 
moreover,  bears  witness  to  Christ  (v.  6ff.),  while  faith  in 
Jesus’  Messiahship  is  the  consequence  of  the  new  birth 
from  God  (v.  1). 

It  is  in  accordance  with  this  that  true  or  saving  faith, 
or  what  the  old  theologians  called  fides  divina,  is  a  gift  of 
God  or  divinely  wrought.  It  is  not  an  arbitrary  act  of  the 
soul  which  can  be  performed  at  will;  and  such  is  the  state 
of  man’s  heart  that,  though  normally  it  could  not  be  with¬ 
held  upon  sufficient  evidence,  the  presence  of  adequate  evi¬ 
dence  does  not  produce  it.  This  is  because  unbelief, 
according  to  Christ’s  teaching,  springs  from  finding  in  Him¬ 
self  a  cause  of  offence  (aicdv8a\ov  Mt.  xiii.  57;  xxvi.  31), 
which  in  turn  springs  from  a  hostility  of  the  heart  to  Him¬ 
self,  Saving  faith,  therefore,  is  impossible  without  a  total 
change  of  heart  or  regeneration.  Jesus,  therefore,  prayed 
for  Peter  that  his  faith  should  not  fail,  thereby  acknowledg¬ 
ing  that  it  is  a  gift  of  God;  the  Apostles  prayed  that  the 
Lord  would  increase  their  faith  (Lk.  xvii.  5);  and  Jesus 
told  Peter  that  his  faith  in  His  Messiahship  and  Deity 
rested  on  an  inward  revealing  act  of  the  Father.  In  the 
Gospel  of  John  this  is  brought  out  more  fully.  Unbelief  is 
a  sin  because  it  shows  an  attitude  of  hostility  to  God  and 
Christ,  and  faith  likewise  discloses  a  state  of  the  heart,  a 
“being  of  the  truth”  (Jn.  xviii.  37),  a  “hearing  and  learning 
of  the  Father”  (Jn.  vi.  45).  Consequently  only  he  that  is 
drawn  by  the  Father  can  come  to  Christ  (J11.  vi.  44),  and 
this  “coming”  or  faith  is  the  Father’s  gift  (Jn.  vi.  65). 
Faith  is  the  gift  of  God’s  grace  and  only  follows  a  complete 
change  of  heart. 

Paul  also,  although  he  does  not  in  so  many  words  as¬ 
cribe  the  producing  of  faith  to  the  Holy  Spirit  except  per¬ 
haps  in  2  Cor.  iv.  13  and  Eph.  ii.  8,  nevertheless  speaks  of 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  5 1 

a  power  of  God  which  works  in  man  before  he  reaches 
true  faith  (Col.  ii.  12).  The  preaching  of  the  Gospel,  more¬ 
over,  is  the  power  of  God  to  those  effectually  called,  and 
foolishness  to  those  without  this  call  (1  Cor.  i.  2T,i)  ;  and 
the  preaching  of  the  Apostle  was  in  the  demonstration  and 
power  of  the  Spirit,  so  that  the  faith  of  his  hearers  de¬ 
pended  not  on  human  wisdom  or  arguments  but  on  the 
power  of  God  (1  Cor.  ii.  5).  It  is  by  God’s  Spirit  alone 
that  we  can  confess  Jesus  as  Lord,  and  no  man  can  truly 
call  him  Lord  without  the  Spirit’s  power  (1  Cor.  xii.  3). 
Similarly,  according  to  the  Apostle  John,  faith  in  the 
Messiahship  of  Jesus  is  the  result  of  being  “born  of  God’’ 

(1  Jn.  v.  1). 

The  Bible,  then,  teaches  that  because  of  the  darkness  of 
the  world  due  to  sin  which  has  marred  God’s  image  in  man  / 
and  Nature,  God  has  made  a  special  revelation  of  Himself 
in  an  objective  and  supernatural  manner,  which  revelation 
culminates  in  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Apostolic  interpretation 
of  His  Person  and  work.  This  is  a  light  to  the  world.  It 
is  self-evidencing  and  bears  the  marks  of  its  divine  origin. 
But  sin-blinded  man,  just  because  his  religious  sense  is 
injured  and  his  heart  and  mind  darkened  by  sin,  cannot  see 
God  in  His  Word  or  come  to  any  experimental  knowledge 
of  Him  through  the  revelation  it  makes.  The  Holy  Spirit 
in  regeneration,  therefore,  must  enlighten  the  mind,  renew 
man’s  whole  nature,  and  give  him  spiritual  light,  thus  en¬ 
abling  and  moving  him  to  recognize  the  marks  of  God  in 
His  Word.  This  action  of  the  Spirit  is  therefore  internal, 
supernatural  and  hence  objective  to  man’s  consciousness. 
But  it  communicates  no  new  truth;  it  simply  enables  us  to 
exercise  saving  faith  in  God,  in  Christ,  and  in  God’s  Word. 

It  therefore  gives  us  not  only  an  ability  to  believe,  but  also 
a  certitude  of  faith,  not  only  in  our  own  sonship,  as  Paul 
teaches  (Rom.  viii.  16),  but  in  the  deity  of  Jesus  and  the 
divine  origin  of  His  Gospel  and  of  God’s  Word.2 

1  On  the  whole  subject  of  the  Scripture  doctrine  of  the  enlightening 
work  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  besides  the  general  works  on  Biblical  The¬ 
ology,  see  the  following  which  discuss  the  subject  briefly:  Buchanan, 


52 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


The  Witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  the  Bible,  then,  is 
not  something  standing  apart  and  isolated  from  the  life  of 
faith;  it  is  a  part  of  the  inward  enlightening  work  of  the 
Spirit  which  we  have  briefly  set  forth,  and  of  precisely  the 
same  nature.  It  is  of  importance  to  understand  the  nature 
and  value  of  this  truth,  because  it  has  fallen  into  neglect,  or 
else  has  been  misunderstood,  and  so  laid  open  to  criticism. 

This  particular  application  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Spirit’s 
work  was  first  adequately  developed  by  Calvin,  and  by  him 
handed  on  to  the  theologians  of  the  succeeding  century  of 
both  the  Reformed  and  Lutheran  branches  of  Protestantism, 
though  in  the  Lutheran  theology  it  found  full  treatment 
only  in  the  seventeenth  century.  When  rightly  conceived 
it  will  be  seen  to  be  a  truth  of  fundamental  importance  in 
relation  to  such  great  questions  as  the  origin  and  certitude 
of  faith. 

It  is  necessary,  however,  to  guard  it  from  misconcep¬ 
tions.  It  was  no  less  acute  a  thinker  than  Strauss3  who 
affirmed  that  in  this  doctrine  the  Protestant  system  found  a 
standpoint  for  faith  independent  of  the  fallible  judgment  of 
the  Church  and  of  the  unstable  judgment  of  the  individual 
subject  of  faith.  But  because  Strauss,  conceived  of  the 
Spirit’s  witness  in  a  mystical  way  as  being  the  communi¬ 
cation  to  man  of  a  new  truth  separate  from  the  Bible,  i.  e. 
the  proposition  that  the  Bible  is  God’s  word,  he  thought  the 
doctrine  open  to  criticism  and  held  that  in  adhering  to  it 
the  Protestant  theology  unavoidably  abandons  its  position  in 
regard  to  the  authority  of  Scripture,  and  turns  aside  into 
Mysticism  or  Rationalism.  If,  he  says,  this  Witness  of  the 
Spirit  to  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible  is  the  communication 

The  Holy  Spirit,  pp.  88-m;  Kuyper,  The  Work  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
p.  152;  Beversluis,  De  heilige  Geest  en  zijne  Werkingen,  pp.  407- 
41 1,  470;  Gloel,  Der  heilige  Geist  in  der  H eilsverkiindigung  des  Paulus: 
pp.  287-300;  Nosgen,  Wesen  und  Wirken  des  heiligen  Geistes,  II,  pp. 
40-46;  Swete,  The  Holy  Spirit  in  the  New  Testament,  pp.  I52f,  179, 
233.  Also  works  on  the  theology  of  the  Gospel  of  John,  such  as 
B.  Weiss,  Johann.  Lehrbegriff,  pp.  28sff;  E.  F.  Scott,  The  Fourth 
Gospel,  Its  Purpose  and  Theology,  pp.  254f,  338,  349. 

“  Strauss,  Die  Christliche  Glaubenslehre,  I.  i3off. 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  53 

of  a  truth  to  man,  i.e.  that  the  Bible  is  God’s  word,  then  this 
new  truth  revealed  becomes  the  fundamental  thing,  and  it 
itself  must  require  support.  Who  shall  certify  to  us  that 
this  truth  really  is  from  God?  Either  another  witness  of 
the  same  kind  is  necessary,  in  which  case  we  have  the  re- 
'  gressus  ad  infinitum  of  Mysticism;  or  else  the  human  mind 
is  supposed  simply  to  recognize  the  truth  revealed  as  ap¬ 
pealing  to  it,  in  which  case  faith  depends  solely  on  our¬ 
selves  and  we  fall  ultimately  into  Rationalism.  This  criti¬ 
cism  is  acute,  and  is  valid  against  the  doctrine  of  the 
Witness  of  the  Spirit  to  the  Bible  as  Strauss  conceived  it 
i.e.  as  giving  a  “content”  of  truth  apart  from  the  Bible 
itself.  It  is  necessary,  therefore,  to  understand  the  nature 
of  this  Witness,  especially  since  pretty  generally  in  modern 
times  either  Strauss’  misconception  has  been  repeated,  or 
else  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  has  been  confounded  with  the 
argument  from  Christian  experience. 

Turning  then  to  the  nature  of  this  Witness  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  to  the  Bible,  it  should  be  noted  first  that  it  is  not  the 
direct  communication  to  the  Christian  by  the  Holy  Spirit 
of  a  truth  or  proposition,  as  for  example  that  the  Bible  is 
the  Word  of  God.  This  is  really  a  form  of  Mysticism. 
Such  a  view  is  not  implied  in  the  Scripture  teaching  as  it 
has  been  set  forth,  nor  is  there  any  such  promise  in  the 
Scripture  concerning  the  work  of  the  Spirit.  This  concep¬ 
tion  of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  would  make  it  analogous 
to  the  idea  of  Revelation  in  the  case  of  the  Prophets  and 
Apostles  who  received  communications  of  truth  directly 
from  God.  It  would,  then,  itself  require  to  be  authenticated, 
and  consequently  we  would  have  a  never-ending  chain  of 
revelations,  as  Strauss  pointed  out.  In  addition  to  this  diffi¬ 
culty,  this  view  by  making  faith  depend  upon  the  new 
truth  revealed,  would  subordinate  the  Scriptures  to  this  new 
revelation,  and  fail  to  recognize  the  self-evidencing  char¬ 
acter  of  the  Bible.  It  therefore  cuts  the  knot,  and  fails 
to  untie  it.  None  of  the  old  Protestant  theologians  con¬ 
ceived  of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  in  this  way.  All  em- 


54 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


phasized  the  self-evidencing  character  of  the  Scripture 
which  they  assert  is  aj/ro7rio-To<?.  Calvin  especially  devotes 
a  whole  chapter4  to  criticising  the  Anabaptists,  and  points 
out  that  the  Word  is  the  instrument  of  the  Spirit  who  uses 
the  Word  and  confirms  it,  but  reveals  no  new  truth,5  so  that 
the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  confirms  the  Scriptures  and  does 
not  supercede  them. 

Neither  is  this  Witness  of  the  Spirit  an  influence  which 
causes  to  emerge  in  our  consciousness  a  blind  or  ungrounded 
conviction  that  the  Bible  is  the  Word  of  God.  Faith  is  a 
conviction  which  is  grounded  on  evidence.  If  the  evidence 
be  lacking — i.e.  evidence  which  at  least  is  valid  for  the 
subject  of  the  faith — the  conviction  will  not  emerge.  The 
opening  of  the  blind  eyes  of  the  soul  is  in  order  to  an  act 
of  vision  which  terminates  on  an  object  viz.  the  Bible  with 
its  marks  of  divine  origin.  It  is  not  a  blind  or  vague  feeling 
that  the  Bible  is  from  God;  it  is  rather  an  intuitive  or  im¬ 
mediate  perception  of  the  marks  of  God’s  authorship  which 
are  upon  the  face  of  the  Scripture.  The  view  of  the  Wit¬ 
ness  of  the  Spirit  which  we  are  criticising,  moreover,  fails 
entirely  to  take  account  of  the  fact  that  the  Bible  is  its  own 
witness,  that  it  bears  upon  itself  the  marks  of  its  divine 
origin,  and  that  the  ultimate  reason  or  ground  of  faith  is 
this  fact  that  God  speaks  to  us  through  the  Scripture.  All 
that  is  required  is  that  the  veil  shall  be  removed  from  our 
eyes  in  order  that  we  may  see  God  in  the  Scripture,  and  it 
is  this  removal  of  the  blinding  effects  of  sin  which  takes 
place  in  regeneration,  which  constitutes  the  Witness  of  the 

*  Calvin,  Institutes,  I,  9. 

*  Ibid .  I,  9:3.  Cf.  also  I,  9:1  “The  Office  of  the  Spirit  which  is  prom¬ 
ised  to  us  is  not  to  feign  new  and  unheard  of  revelations,  or  to  coin 
a  new  system  of  doctrine,  which  would  draw  us  away  from  the  re¬ 
ceived  doctrine  of  the  Gospel,  but  to  seal  to  our  minds  the  same 
doctrine  which  the  Gospel  delivers”.  In  I,  7:5  Calvin,  it  is  true,  speaks 
of  a  “sense”  which  can  be  produced  by  “nothing  short  of  a  revelation 
from  heaven”.  But  this,  as  Dr.  Warfield  says,  is  only  to  describe  its 
“heavenly  source”;  not  its  mode  or  nature.  Cf.  B.  B.  Warfield,  “Cal¬ 
vin’s  Doctrine  of  the  Knowledge  of  God”,  Princeton  Theological 
Review,  VII,  pp.  219-324.  It  confirms  the  Scriptures  according  to 
Calvin,  it  does  not  supercede  them.  Cf.  also,  I,  9:3. 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  55 


Holy  Spirit.  This  agrees  with  what  we  have  seen  to  be  the 
teaching  of  Scripture  which  uniformly  represents  the  en¬ 
lightening  work  of  the  Spirit  as  an  opening  of  the  eyes  of 
the  soul  for  an  act  of  objective  vision,  and  not  a  mere  sub¬ 
jective  impression. 

This,  moreover,  is  the  uniform  teaching  of  the  old  Protes¬ 
tant  theologians.  All  alike  emphasized  the  fact  that  the 
Bible  is  self-evidencing  or  auroVto-To?  as  they  called  it. 
Calvin  laid  the  greatest  emphasis  upon  this  point.  He 
taught  that  the  Scripture  bears  on  its  face  the  marks  of  its 
divine  origin  so  that  when  our  eyes  are  opened  we  recognize 
this  clear  evidence  as  we  would  immediately  distinguish  be¬ 
tween  white  and  black  or  a  sweet  and  bitter  taste.6  In  pre¬ 
cisely  the  same  sense  all  the  Reformed  and  Lutheran  the¬ 
ologians  taught  that  the  Scripture  bears  the  marks  of  its 
own  credibility  and  is  avroinaro 9.  7 

*  Calvin,  Institutes  I,  7  :2 — ’“But  if  any  one  should  inquire  ‘How  shall 
we  be  persuaded  of  its  divine  origin,  unless  we  have  recourse  to  the 
decree  of  the  Church?’  this  is  just  as  if  anyone  should  inquire,  ‘How 
shall  we  learn  to  distinguish  light  from  darkness,  white  from  black, 
sweet  from  bitter?’.  For  the  Scripture  exhibits  as  clear  evidence  of  its 
truth,  as  white  and  black  things  do  of  their  colour;  or  sweet  and 
bitter  things  of  their  taste.” 

7  Cf.  Polanus,  Syntagma  Theol.  I,  14.  Piscator,  Aph.  Doct.  Christ. 
p.  16  asserts  that  it  is  the  result  of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  that  the 
Scripture  shows  itself  as  self-evidencing  or  avroTno-Tos.  Ursinus,  Loci, 
pp.  436ff  regards  the  Witness  as  enabling  us  to  recognize  the  marks 
of  God  in  the  Scripture.  Zanchius,  Op.  VIII,  332-334  says  that  the 
deity  of  the  Scripture  shines  from  its  pages  like  the  sun  even  though 
we  are  so  spiritually  blind  that  we  cannot  see  it.  Maresius,  Systema, 
pp.  11,  12,  lays  emphasis  on  the  fact  that  the  testimony  of  the  Spirit 
is  not  a  blind  one  apart  from  the  marks  of  God  in  the  Scripture. 
Maccovius,  Loci  Com.  pp.  27,  28  asserts  the  same  thing;  and  Heidegger, 
Corp.  Theol.  II,  14,  expressly  says  that  the  Witness  is  not  a  “bare 
persuasion”  without  any  grounds — “Testimonium  illud  Spiritus  S.  non 
est  nuda  persuasio  animi,  quae  fallaciae  obnoxia  esse  queat,  vel  motus 
cordis  irrationabilis,  qualem  enthusiastae  pro  divino  venditant :  sed 
est  fulgor  et  splendor  eius  in  tenebrosis  cordibus  nostris,  ministrans 
nobis  illuminationem  cognitionis  gloriae  Dei  in  facie  Jesu  Christi  (2 
Cor.  IV  6),  ut  ita  remotis  naturalibus  obstaculis  omnem  excellentiam 
et  divitias  verbi  divini  introspicere  valeamus.”  Likewise  the  Lutheran 
theologians,  although  they  conceived  of  the  nature  of  the  Witness  of 
the  Spirit  somewhat  differently  from  the  Reformed  theologians,  agreed 


56 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


The  Witness  of  the  Spirit,  therefore,  is  not  mystical 
either  in  the  sense  that  it  consists  in  the  immediate  revela¬ 
tion  of  a  truth  or  proposition  to  the  mind  concerning  the 
Scripture,  or  in  the  sense  that  it  causes  the  emergence  of  a 
blind,  irrational,  or  ungrounded  conviction.  The  marks  of 
God  are  in  the  Bible,  and  the  want  of  faith  is  due  to  the 
effects  of  sin  on  the  mind,  blinding  it  to  these  marks;  it  is 
not  due  to  any  want  of  evidence.  Consequently  when  spiri¬ 
tual  blindness  is  removed,  the  marks  or  criteria  constitute 
valid  grounds  of  faith. 

But  if  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  is  not  mystical  in  either 
of  the  above  senses,  it  is  nevertheless  objective  to  the  sub¬ 
ject  of  faith,  and  is  not  to*  be  confused  or  identified  with  the 
argument  from  Christian  experience,  or  the  witness  of  ex¬ 
perience  to  the  divine  origin  of  Christianity  and  the  Bible. 
The  Spirit  of  God  by  means  of  the  Word  of  God  does  pro¬ 
duce  in  the  Christian  an  experience  of  salvation  through 
Christ,  which  experience  is  inexplicable  apart  from  the 
Word,  is  congruous  with  the  Word,  and  so  testifies  to  the 
Bible  that  it  is  of  divine  origin,  the  very  word  of  God.  By 
many  theologians,  especially  in  modern  times,  the  Witness 
of  the  Spirit  to  the  Bible  has  been  identified  with  this  argu¬ 
ment  from  Christian  experience.  This  argument  has  as¬ 
sumed  several  forms,  but  in  every  case  the  argument  is  of 
the  nature  of  an  inference  from  Christian  experience  to  its 
cause.  In  its  lowest  form  it  eliminates  the  supernatural 
work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  altogether,  and  simply  argues  for 
the  divine  origin  of  Christianity  from  its  effects  in  bettering 
man  ethically.  This  was  the  view  taken  by  the  old  Ration¬ 
alists.  Semler  argued  for  the  divine  origin  of  Scripture 
simply  because  it  improves  man,  and  the  view  of  Less  was 
practically  the  same.8  Not  unlike  this  position  of  the  old 

that  it  does  not  produce  a  blind  conviction,  and  that  the  Scripture  is 
self-evidencing;  Gerhard,  Loci  Theol.  II  speaks  of  the  Scripture  as 
avTOTTLCTTtt  and  “winning  faith  by  virtue  of  their  own  excellence”. 
Cf.  also  Baier,  Compend.  Theol.  Pos.  80.  Quenstedt,  Theol.  Didact. 
Polem.  I,  140,  also  teaches  the  same  thing. 

‘Less,  Ueber  die  Religion,  ihre  Geschichte  und  Bestdtigung a  Bd.  ii. 
pp.  11 7  f.  Less  says  that  everyone  who  tests  or  tries  Christianity  will 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  57 

Rationalists  is  that  of  those  members  of  the  Ritschlian 
school  who  deny  all  immediate  and  supernatural  influence 
of  the  exalted  Christ  or  of  the  Spirit  upon  the  heart,  and 
having  thus  eliminated  every  transcendent  element  in  the 
genesis  of  faith,  seek  to  explain  it  simply  from  the  influence 
of  the  historical  Jesus.  Thus  Herrmann  asserts  that  the 
personal  power  of  goodness  works  upon  us  through  Jesus 
as  He  lived  on  earth,  and  through  Him  we  believe  in  God. 
The  certitude  of  our  faith  in  God  is  thus  due  to  the  moral 
influence  upon  us  of  the  historical  Jesus.  Herrmann’s  view 
was  also  advocated  by  Gottschick  and  Rade.9 

This  argument  for  Christianity  and  this  account  of  the 
genesis  of  faith  is  a  denial  of  the  truth  of  the  Witness  of 
the  Holy  Spirit.  It  substitutes  for  the  supernatural  power 
of  the  Spirit,  the  ethical  and  religious  effect  of  the  truths 
of  Christianity,  as  in  the  old  Rationalism,  or  of  the  so-called 
historical  Jesus,  as  in  the  left  wing  of  the  Ritschlian  school. 
It  rests  upon  a  Pelagian  view  of  sin  and  man’s  condition, 
and  leaves  wholly  unexplained  the  fact  that  Jesus  and  the 
Gospel  is  foolishness  to  one  man  and  the  power  of  God  unto 
salvation  to  another.  Since  it  totally  neglects  the  blinding 
power  of  sin,  it  is  wholly  inadequate  as  an  explanation  of 
the  genesis  of  faith. 

There  is,  however,  a  higher  form  of  the  argument  from 
Christian  experience,  which  has  often  been  identified  with 
the  Witness  of  the  Spirit.  It  admits  the  supernatural  in¬ 
fluence  of  the  Holy  Spirit  upon  the  heart  in  producing 

find  an  improvement  and  peace  and  happiness.  Less  calls  this  a  wit¬ 
ness  of  the  Spirit,  but  prefers  to  call  it  an  argument  from  experience. 
Consequently  many  Rationalists  like  Wegscheider  rejected  the  doctrine 
altogether.  On  the  Rationalists  cf.  Klaiber,  “Die  Lehre  der  altpro- 
testantischen  Dogmatiker  von  dem  Testimonium  Spiritus  Sancti,  und 
ihre  dogmatische  Bedeutung,  Jahrbuecher  fur  deutsche  Theol.  ii.  1857, 
p.  22. 

’Herrmann,  Der  Verkehr  des  Christen  mit  Gott;  also  Gewissheit  des 
Glaubens2,  59;  Gottschick,  Die  Kirchlichkeit  der  sog.  Kircklichen  The- 
ologie;  Rade,  “Der  rechte  Christliche  Glaube,”  Christl.  Welt.  1892, 
Nr.  1.  For  an  account  and  criticism  of  the  Ritschlian  Theologians 
vid.  Kostlin,  Die  iBegr undung  unserer  sittlich-religibsen  Ueberzeugung. 
pp.  97ff. 


58  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

Christian  experience,  and  finds  in  this  experience  what  it 
terms  a  Witness  of  the  Spirit  to  the  divine  origin  of  God’s 
Word.  The  Spirit  by  means  of  the  Word  produces  in  the 
Christian  an  experience  of  salvation,  which  experience  is 
due  to  the  hearing  of  the  Word,  is  congruous  with  the 
Word,  and  which  therefore  witnesses  to  the  truth,  and  so 
to  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible.  This  is  a  valid  argument, 
but  quite  distinct  from  the  Witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
Some  of  the  modern  theologians  who  have  developed  this 
argument  have  not  fallen  into  the  mistake  of  identifying  it 
with  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit,  as  for  example  Kostlin.10 
By  many,  however,  the  doctrine  of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit 
has  been  reduced  to  this  argument  from  Christian  experi¬ 
ence.  This  was  done  in  the  eighteenth  century  by  the 
Supra-naturalists  and  the  Rationalists.  Thus  Baumgarten11 
says  that  there  is  a  twofold  experience  from  which  we  infer 
the  divine  origin  of  Scripture;  first  an  experience  of  the 
truth  of  the  main  content  of  Scripture  by  means  of  the 
agreement  of  the  Scripture  descriptions  of  states  of  the  soul 
with  our  own,  and  by  means  of  our  attaining  to  an  end  not 
otherwise  attainable  when  we  accept  the  Bible  way  of  sal¬ 
vation  ;  and  secondly  an  immediate  experience  of  the  power 
of  the  Bible  on  our  souls.  We  argue  from  this  by  infer¬ 
ence  that  the  Bible  is  true  and  so  must  be  divine  in  origin 
since  no  human  book  has  any  such  witness  to  it.  This 
argument  from  experience  which  has  been  developed  in 
modern  times  by  such  theologians  as  Frank,  Kostlin,  and 
Ihmels,  has  by  a  number  of  theologians  been  identified  with 
the  Witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit.12 

x#  Kostlin,  op.  cit.,  pp.  100  ff. 

11  Baumgarten,  Dogmatik,  pp.  120  ff. 

“  H.  Cremer,  Realency.  f.  prot.  Theol.  u.  Kirche,  vi.  p.  760:  “Dies 
ist  das  testimonium  Spiritus  S.,  die  kirchliche  und  individuelle  Erfarung 
von  der  Bedeutung  der  heil.  Schrift.  Sie  bezieht  sich  auf  die  Schrift  als 
ganzes”.  Precisely  the  same  reduction  of  the  testimony  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  to  the  argument  from  experience  is  found  in  the  Article  on  this 
subject  by  Wiesinger,  “Ich  Glaube  an  den  heiligen  Geist”,  Neue 
Kirchliche  Zeitschrift,  ix.  1898,  pp.  763-787;  zhd.  especially  pp.  778,  779: 
“Ist  es  der  vom  Geiste  gewirkte  Glaube  an  Jesum  Christum,  in  dem  wir 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  59 

This  argument  from  Christian  experience  is  a  valid  argu¬ 
ment  for  the  divine  origin  of  Christianity  and  the  Bible,  but 
is  quite  distinct  from  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  to  the  Bible. 
The  identification  of  the  two  confuses  the  question  of  the 
grounds  of  faith  with  that  of  the  origin  of  faith.  Chris¬ 
tian  experience  depends  upon  or  grows  out  of  a  saving 
faith  the  doctrinal  content  of  which  is  given  by  the  Christian 
revelation  in  the  Bible.  Christian  experience,  therefore, 
presupposes  a  faith  in  this  revelation  and  cannot  give  rise 
to  such  faith.  The  Witness  of  the  Spirit  is  not  one  among 
several  grounds  of  faith.  It  lies  back  of  all  such  grounds 
as  the  efficient  cause  of  the  genesis  of  faith,  enabling  us  to 
be  convinced  by  the  grounds  of  faith  as  we  otherwise  would 
not  be.  Christian  experience  on  the  other  hand,  may  be  a 
reason  for  faith  after  such  faith  has  arisen;  it  cannot  give 
rise  to  it  since  it  presupposes  saving  faith.  The  distinctly 
Christian  experiences  of  the  transformation  of  life,  pardon, 
peace,  divine  sonship,  and  sanctification — all  these  are  pro¬ 
duced  in  an  instrumental  sense  by  God’s  Word,  and  are 
nourished  by  the  Word,  and  so  witness  to  the  saving  power 
and  hence  the  divine  origin  of  the  Word;  but  these  ex¬ 
periences  are  all  consequences  of  the  faith  to  which  the 
Witness  of  the  Spirit  gives  rise. 

Moreover  this  testimony  of  Christian  experience  to  the 
Bible  is  not  an  objective  witness  of  God  to  us;  it  is  the 
witness  of  our  own  hearts  to  God’s  Word.  It  is  not  the 
Spirit  bearing  witness  with  our  spirit,  but  the  testimony  of 
our  renewed  heart  and  experience  to  the  Word  which  nour¬ 
ishes  it.  It  rests  moreover  on  an  inference  from  our  ex¬ 
perience  to  the  Bible  as  its  source,  and  has  not,  therefore, 

die  Gnade  Gottes  und  des  ewigen  Lebens  gewiss  geworden  sind,  so 
sind  wir  ebendamit  auch  der  Schrift,  sofern  sie  uns  diese  Heils- 
botschaft  vermittelt,  gewiss”.  This  also  seems  to  have  been  the  form 
in  which  the  doctrine  was  revived  in  Holland,  after  its  rejection  by 
the  Rationalists,  by  Scholten;  vid.  Van  Oostersee,  Christian  Dog¬ 
matics ,  i,  p.  152.  In  America  a  view  similar  to  that  of  Cremer  and 
Wiesinger  has  been  given  in  the  Article  by  Dr.  John  De  Witt,  “The 
Testimony  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  the  Bible”,  Presb.  and  Reformed  Rev. 
189S.  PP-  69-85. 


6o 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


the  immediate  character  of  the  recognition  of  the  divine 
origin  of  God’s  Word  which  results  from  the  Witness  of 
the  Spirit.  Although  the  soul  may  seem  to  possess  an  im¬ 
mediate  certitude  of  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible,  if  we 
look  only  to  the  argument  from  Christian  experience  a 
syllogism  will  be  seen  to  underly  it,  viz.  the  Christian  is 
certain  that  his  new  life  is  from  God,  and  he  is  certain  that 
it  is  from  the  Scripture,  so  that  he  is  therefore  certain  that 
the  Scripture  is  from  God.  And  since  this  witness  of  ex¬ 
perience  is  thus  subjective  in  character,  faith  is  made  to  rest 
upon  the  experiences  of  the  soul  rather  than  upon  the  marks 
of  divine  origin  in  God’s  Word  and  this  objective  testimony 
of  God  Himself  which  is  the  ultimate  ground  of  true  faith 
and  Christian  certitude. 

There  is  still  another  view  of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit 
to  the  Bible  which,  though  it  endeavors  to  hold  to  the  ob¬ 
jective  character  of  this  witness  as  from  the  Holy  Ghost, 
and  not  from  man’s  experience,  nevertheless  resembles  the 
argument  from  Christian  experience  in  many  respects.  This 
is  the  view  of  the  old  Lutheran  theologians.  In  the 
Lutheran  theology  of  the  seventeenth  century  a  conception 
of  the  relation  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  God’s  Word  as  a 
means  of  grace  emerged  which  influenced  the  idea  of  the 
Witness  of  the  Spirit  to  the  Word.  The  power  of  the 
Spirit  was  conceived  as  being  wholly  in  and  through  the 

* 

Word,  and  not  directly  upon  the  heart  as  the  action  of  a 
Personal  Being.  The  Word  itself,  therefore,  was  conceived 
as  having  a  supernatural  power  which  always  operates  and 
is  effective  when  not  resisted.  The  Witness  of  the  Spirit, 
therefore,  as  conceived  by  Quenstedt,  Baier,  and  Hollaz,13 

13  The  peculiar  form  of  the  doctrine  in  the  Lutheran  Church  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  it  was  not  fully  developed  until  the  seventeenth  century 
when  the  doctrine  of  the  purely  immanent  relation  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
to  the  Word  arose.  Luther  believed  that  the  subjective  appropriation 
of  the  Gospel  is  due  to  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  Spirit 
“seals”  the  Word  in  our  experience  as  a  saving  word,  but  Luther  did  V 

not  develop  the  inference  that  thus  the  divine  origin  of  the  Word  is 
witnessed  to,  vid.  Klaiber,  op.  cit.  pp.  2,  3 ;  also  Martius,  Locus  Dog- 
maticus  De  Testimonio  Spiritus  Sancti  Historic e  et  Systematice  Expli- 


l 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  6l 


is  really  the  saving  efficacy  of  God’s  Word,  which  efficacy, 
however,  is  a  supernatural  one  from  God’s  Spirit  in  the 
Word.  Hence  these  theologians  said  that  the  Spirit  bears 
witness  to  the  divine  origin  of  the  Word  by  means  of  the 
efficacy  of  the  Word.  This  conception  of  the  Testimony  of 

catur,  p.  9.  Melanchthon  touches  briefly  upon  the  doctrine  in  the 
Preface  to  his  Loci  where  he  sets  the  “method  of  philosophy”  over 
against  the  “doctrine  of  the  Church”,  the  former  being  by  “demon¬ 
stration”,  the  latter  resting  on  divine  revelation.  This  latter,  though 
witnessed  to  by  miracles,  has  also  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  which 
aids  the  mind  to  faith.  Speaking  of  Christian  truths  he  says — “quia 
res  sunt  extra  judicium  humanae  mentis  poritae,  languidior  est  assen- 
sio,  quae  fit,  quia  mens  movetur  illis  testimoniis  et  miraculis  et  juvatur 
a  Spiritu  S.  ad  assentiendum”.  The  doctrine  is  found  stated  in  Hutter, 
Q.  I  Prop.  Ill;  Hunnius,  Op.  Ed.  1607,  i.  10;  and  fully  developed  by 
Quenstedt,  Baier,  and  Hollaz.  The  idea  is  that  the  Spirit’s  influence 
and  witness  is  solely  through  the  saving  power  of  the  Word.  Quen¬ 
stedt,  Theol.  Didact.  Polem.  I,  Cap.  4,  Q.  9,  p.  140,  says  that  the 
“criteria”  of  the  divinity  of  Scripture  produce  only  fides  Humana;  that 
fides  divina  is  due  to  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit;  and  that  this  is  found 
in  the  supernatural  efficacy  of  the  Word  of  God — “Quanquam  multa 
sint  KpLTrjpux  et  motiva  fidei  seu  credibilitatis,  ut  vocant,  quae  potenter 
suadent  S.  Scripturae  autoritatem,  et  originem  coelestem,  sive  in- 
ducunt  hominem  infidelem  docilem,  et  non  malitiose  repugnantem,  ut 
credat,  hoc  verbum,  quod  Scriptura  proponit,  esse  Oeowevo-Tov  et  vere 
Dei  verbum :  Ilia  tamen  Kpcrrjpi a  sive  yvoptcryuara,  quantacumque  sint, 
fidem  tantum  humanam  et  persuasionem  efficient ;  ultima  vero  ratio, 
sub  qua  et  propter  quam  fide  divina  et  infallibili  credimus,  verbum 
Dei  esse  verbum  Dei,  est  ipsa  intrinseca  vis  et  efficacia  verbi  divini  et 
Spiritus  S.  in  Scriptura  et  per  Scripturam  loquentis  testificatio  et  ob- 
signatio”.  Baler's  doctrine  is  the  same — Compend.  Theol.  Pos.  Proleg. 
C.  II,  parag.  22,  p.  86 — “Divinam  fidem,  qua  Scripturae  sacrae  ex  parte 
formalis  (seu  sensus  aut  doctrinae)  divina  origo  agnoscatur,  doctrina 
ipsa  Scripturae  omni  tempore  gignit,  quatenus  cum  attentione  lecta, 
aut  voce  docentis  proposita,  explicata  et  auditu  percepta,  per  se  im¬ 
mediate  quidem,  sed  virtute  divina,  quam  sibi  semper  et  indissolubiliter 
conjunctam  habet:  adeoque  concurrente,  et  virtutem  hanc  exerente 
Deo,  intellectum  quidem  hominis  illuminat,  seu  excitata  cogitatione 
sancta  et  objecto  congrua  in  assensum  inclinat :  voluntatem  vero  ejus 
allicit  ac  movet,  ut  intellectui  assensum,  sibi  ipsi  (Doctrinae  in  Scrip- 
turis  comprehensae)  tanquam  a  Deo  profectae,  praebendum  imperat; 
et  sic  intellectum  ipsum  ad  assentiendum,  sub  ratione  revelationis 
divinae,  determinet.”  Also  p.  92  “ita  etiam  in  ordine  ad  nos  seu  ut 
fide  divina  credamus,  Scripturae  libros,  sub  eo,  quo  nobis,  idiomate, 
i.e.  verborum  in  certa  lingua,  serie  et  contextu,  esse  divinitus  inspiratos, 
et  sic  habere  vim  illam  normativam,  seu  dignitatem  Canonicam,  non 
sufficit  solum  Ecclesiae  testimonium ;  verum  et  hie  internum  Spiritus 


62 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


the  Holy  Spirit,  Klaiber  claims,  is  quite  different  from  the 
argument  from  experience  since  it  is  a  testimony  of  the 
Spirit  of  God  and  not  of  our  religious  states  of  mind,14 
and  Klaiber  and  Martius15  adopt  this  view  themselves. 

This  idea  of  the  Testimony  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  inade¬ 
quate.  We  pass  over  the  objection  that  it  rests  upon  a 
wrong  view  of  the  relation  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  the  Word, 
and  over  the  fact  that  neither  Scripture  nor  experience 


S.  testimonium,  seu  operationem  efficacem  per  ipsam  Scripturam,  con- 
currere  oportet.”  Thus  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  through  the 
Word  solely.  Precisely  similar  is  the  doctrine  in  Hollaz,  Exam.  Theol. 
Acroamat.  p.  125 — “Per  internum  spiritus  sancti  testimonium  heic 
intellegitur  actus  supernaturalis  spiritus  sancti  per  verbum  Dei  attente 
lectum  vel  auditu  perceptum,  virtute  sua  divina  scripturae  sacrae  com- 
municata  cor  hominis  pulsantis,  aperientis,  illuminantis,  et  ad  ob- 
sequium  fidei  flectentis,  ut  homo  illuminatus  ex  internis  motibus  spir- 
itualibus  vere  sentiat,  verbum  sibi  propositum  a  Deo  ipso  esse  pro- 
feetum,  atque  immotum  ipsi  assensum  praebeat.”  Here  the  object 
testified  to  is  the  divine  origin  of  Scripture;  the  nature  of  the  witness¬ 
ing  is  an  internal  action  of  the  Spirit  through  the  Word,  the  power 
being  identified  with  the  efficacy  of  the  Word.  This  latter  point  is 
made  clearer  in  the  following  passage  where  the  power  of  the  Spirit 
and  of  the  Word  are  identified — p.  125 — '“Internum  spiritus  sancti 
testimonium  de  authentia  sacrae  scripturae  coincidit  quoad  rem  cum 
efficacia  sacrae  scripturae  in  actu  secundo  spectata  .  .  .  Etenim  zhs 
effectiva,  quam  verbo  Dei  in  producendo  effectu.  illuminationis,  con- 
versionis,  renovationis,  et  confirmationis,  tribuimus,  vere  divina  est, 
Rom.  1  :i6,  nec  differt  quoad  rem  a  virtute,  quae  spiritus  sancti 
operantis  in  cordibus  hominum  est,  quanquam  disparitas  sit  in  modo 
habendi  hanc  vim,  ut  pote  quae  spiritui  sancto  ex  se  et  a  se  ceu  causae 
principiali  verbo  autem  participative  causae  organicae  competit.”  Ger¬ 
hard,  Loci  I.  Cap.  II  Parag.  22,  pp.  9,  10,  touches  on  the  doctrine  only 
briefly  and  not  in  such  a  way  as  to  bring  out  the  peculiar  features  of 
the  Lutheran  view  as  seen  in  Baier,  Quenstedt  and  Hollaz.  After 
speaking  of  the  “criteria”  of  the  divine  origin  of  Scripture,  both  in¬ 
ternal  and  external,  he  says — “Turn  demum  sequitur,  ut  Spiritus  S. 
in  cords  ipsius  ferat  testimonium,  et  suorum  verborum  veritatem  ob- 
signet  etc.”  The  same  view  is  held  by  those  of  the  modern  Lutheran 
theologians  who  have  treated  of  this  doctrine,  for  example  Philippi, 
who  discusses  the  doctrine  at  some  length,  Kirchliche  Glaubenslehre a, 

i.  pp.  I2gff. 

14  Klaiber,  op.  cit.  pp.  2off. 

15  Martius,  Locus  Dogmaticus  De  Testimonio  Spiritus  Sancti  His- 
torice  et  Systematice  Explicatur,  pp.  38ft ;  Klaiber,  op.  cit.  pp.  i7ff, 
30ff. 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  6.3 

warrant  the  attribution  of  any  such  power  to  the  Bible,  but 
show  the  truth  to  be  quite  the  contrary.  Looking-  at  this 
view  of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  in  itself,  we  see  that  while 
it  aims  at  the  recognition  of  the  divine  source  of  the  Wit¬ 
ness,  it  really  conceives  of  its  result  as  a  feeling  of  the  saving 
power  of  the  Bible,  and  not  as  an  objective  or  intuitive  be¬ 
holding  of  the  marks  of  God  in  the  Bible.  It  not  only, 
therefore,  tends  to  reduce  the  Witness  to  an  inference  from 
Christian  experience,  it  also  limits  the  criteria  of  the  divine 
origin  of  Scripture  to  its  saving  efficacy,  whereas  the  Bible 
has  many  other  marks  of  divine  origin  which  the  renewed 
mind  can  behold  or  recognize.  Like  the  argument  from 
Christian  experience,  it  gives  after  all  an  inferential  rather 
than  an  immediate  certitude,  and  can  be  put  in  the  form  of 
the  same  syllogism,  as  Klaiber  himself  recognizes.  The 
Christian  feels  the  saving  power  of  the  Bible,  he  knows  his 
new  life  is  from  God,  and  therefore  that  the  Bible  is  from 
God.  He  does  not,  therefore,  so  much  see  and  acquiesce  in 
the  self-evidencing  divine  character  of  the  Scripture,  as 
experience  its  power  and  hence  infer  its  origin  from  God. 
The  difference  between  this  mode  of  conceiving  of  the 
Witness  of  the  Spirit  and  that  of  Calvin  and  all  the  Re¬ 
formed  theologians  may  be  illustrated  from  the  case  of  a 
painting  of  a  great  master.  How  are  we  to  recognize  the 
painter?  According  to  one  view  the  masterpiece  arouses 
feelings  of  artistic  pleasure  or  wonder  and  from  them  we 
know  it  must  be  from  the  hand  of  a  master.  According  to 
the  other  view  the  painting  bears  a  number  of  marks  of  its 
being  from  the  hand  of  such  and  such  a  master;  these 
marks  we  immediately  recognize  if  we  have  the  artistic 
sense.  Just  so  when  the  eyes  of  our  heart  are  opened,  or 
our  religious  sense  restored  by  God’s  Spirit,  we  immediately 
see  the  marks  of  His  hand  in  the  Scripture. 

The  Witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  the  Bible,  then,  is 
not  objective  in  the  sense  of  being  the  mystical  communica¬ 
tion  to  the  mind  of  a  truth  or  proposition,  nor  is  it  a  subjec¬ 
tive  inference  from  Christian  experience.  It  is  simply  the 


64 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


saving  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  on  the  heart  removing  the 
spiritual  blindness  produced  by  sin,  so  that  the  marks  of 
God’s  hand  in  the  Bible  can  be  clearly  seen  and  appreciated. 
God  testifies  to  the  Bible  by  prophecy  and  miracle,  by  the 
greatness  of  the  truths  which  it  contains,  by  their  suitability 
to  our  needs.  But  unrenewed  man,  while  he  may  attain  to  a 
merely  intellectual  or  “speculative”  faith  on  the  basis  of  ra¬ 
tional  arguments  or  the  testimony  of  the  Church,  cannot  sav¬ 
ingly  apprehend  God  nor  see  God  as  He  is  revealed  as  the 
author  of  the  Scripture.  Those  who  are  born  of  the  Spirit 
have  their  minds  and  hearts  enlightened  so  that  they  are  en¬ 
abled  and  persuaded  to  accept  the  objective  testimony  which 
God  gives  to  the  Bible,  and  to  recognize  immediately  or  be¬ 
hold  intuitively  the  marks  of  God’s  hand  in  the  Scripture. 
Nothing  intervenes  between  the  human  soul  and  the  Word  of 
God,  but  the  soul  is  given  the  ability  to  see  God  as  the 
Author  of  the  Bible  and  to  rest  on  its  truths  with  a  saving 
faith,  or  what  the  old  theologians  called  fides  divina  because 
it  rests  on  God’s  testimony,  as  distinguished  from  fides 
humana  which  rests  simply  on  human  testimony  or  rational 
arguments.  The  evidence  for  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible 
is  not  lacking,  but  the  unrenewed  man  cannot  be  convinced 
by  it.  Hence  while  saving  faith  does  not  arise  apart  from 
evidence,  and  while  normally,  i.e.  apart  from  the  binding 
effects  of  sin,  it  could  not  be  withheld  when  the  evidence 
is  present,  it  does  not  follow  that  it  will  arise  when  adequate 
evidence  is  present,  because  the  heart  and  mind  are  blinded 
by  sin  so  that  they  are  not  open  to  conviction.  It  was  for 
this  reason,  as  we  saw,  that  Jesus  traced  unbelief  to  a  con¬ 
dition  of  the  heart,  and  that  Paul  represented  the  illumina¬ 
tion  of  the  Spirit  as  absolutely  necessary  to  the  apprehension 
of  the  truths  of  the  Gospel.  The  Witness  of  the  Spirit  to 
the  Bible,  therefore,  is  not  isolated,  but  a  part  of  His  sav¬ 
ing  work  in  the  soul.  He  witnesses  with  our  spirits  that 
we  are  the  sons  of  God;  He  enables  us  to  recognize  the 
glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ;  but  He  also  takes 
away  our  spiritual  blindness  so  that  we  see  the  glory  of 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  65 


God  in  His  written  Word  as  well  as  in  His  Incarnate  Word. 
Just  as  an  aesthetic  sense  is  necessary  for  the  appreciation 
of  a  work  of  art,  so  the  restored  religious  sense  is  necessary 
for  a  saving  apprehension  of  God  and  divine  things,  and  so 
it  is  that,  though  the  external  attestation  and  the  internal 
marks  of  divine  authorship  are  not  wanting  to  the  Bible, 
until  men  are  born  again  they  will  not  be  convinced,  but 
when  their  spiritual  sight  is  restored  they  see,  not  with  a 
blind  irrational  feeling,  but  see  and  behold  the  divinity  of 
the  Bible.  The  Christian,  therefore,  believes  the  Bible  ulti¬ 
mately  on  the  testimony  of  God  in  His  Word  recognized  by 
means  of  the  testimony  of  God  in  his  heart. 

This  doctrine  was  first  adequately  developed  by  Calvin. 
Following  him  it  was  taken  up  in  Holland,  France,  England 
and  Scotland.  It  received  full  recognition  in  the  form  in 
which  Calvin  developed  it  by  Ursinus,  Piscator,  Zanchius, 
Wollebius,  Wendelin,  Maresius,  Maccovius,  and  Heideg- 


18  Calvin,  Institutes.  I.  Cap.  7.  Calvin  devotes  an  entire  chapter  to  the 
Witness  of  the  Spirit  to  the  Bible.  He  was  the  first  to  give  the 
doctrine  its  full  significance  as  the  one  absolutely  indispensable  con¬ 
dition  of  any  adequate  knowledge  of  God  and  divine  things  for  sinful 
man.  He  taught  that  the  ground  of  belief  in  the  truth  of  Scripture 
is  that  God  is  its  author  (i.  7:4).  But  our  sure  persuasion  of  this  is 
due  to  the  inward  Witness  of  the  Spirit  in  the  heart.  The  necessity 
for  this  Witness  does  not  lie  in  any  inadequacy  or  want  of  valid  reasons 
for  belief  in  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible.  “It  is  true,”  he  says, 
“that  if  we  were  inclined  to  argue  this  point,  many  things  might  be 
adduced  which  certainly  evince,  if  there  be  any  God  in  heaven,  that 
He  is  the  Author  of  the  Law  and  the  Prophecies  and  the  Gospel. 
Even  though  men  of  learning  and  deep  judgment  rise  up  in  opposition, 
and  assert  and  display  all  the  power  of  their  minds  in  the  dispute,  yet 
unless  they  are  wholly  lost  to  all  sense  of  shame,  this  confession  will 
be  extorted  from  them,  that  the  Scripture  exhibits  the  plainest  evi¬ 
dences  that  it  is  God  who  speaks  in  it,  which  manifests  its  doctrine 
to  be  divine”  (i.  7:4).  The  necessity  for  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit^  is 
subjective,  and  lies  in  the  fact  that  our  minds  are  blinded  by  sin 
and  that  it  is  true  or  saving  faith,  not  mere  intellectual  assent,  that  is 
in  question.  Calvin  says  that  in  spite  of  the  validity  of  the  reasons 
for  belief  in  Scripture  “yet  it  is  acting  a  preposterous  part,  to  en¬ 
deavor  to  produce  sound  faith  in  the  Scripture  by  disputations” ;  and 
he  adds  that  though  he  could  refute  all  cavils,  this  would  not  “fix  in 
their  hearts  that  assurance  which  is  essential  to  true  piety”  (i.  7:4). 


66 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


It  is  taught  in  the  same  form  and  spirit  by  such  modern 
Reformed  theologians  as  Van  Oostersee,  Kuyper,  and 

As  to  the  nature  of  this  Witness,  Calvin  taught  that  it  was  an  “internal 
witness”  “fixing  assurance  in  the  heart”,  so  that  those  “inwardly  taught 
by  the  Spirit  feel  an  entire  acquiescence  in  Scripture,  and  that  it  is 
self-authenticated,  carrying  with  it  its  own  evidence,  and  ought  not 
to  be  made  the  subject  of  demonstration  and  argument  from  reason, 
but  obtains  the  credit  which  it  deserves  with  us  by  the  testimony 
of  the  Spirit”  (i.  7:5).  He  also  calls  it  a  divine  illumination  of  the 
mind  which  results  in  an  immediate  intuitive  perception  of  God  in 
the  Scripture,  and  is  therefore  not  through  any  process  of  inference 
(i.  7:5).  He  speaks  of  it  once  as  a  “revelation  from  heaven”  (i.  7: 5), 
but  does  not  mean  the  revelation  of  a  proposition  or  truth,  as  is 
clear  from  his  attacks  on  the  mystics.  He  is  here  referring  simply 
to  the  supernatural  or  heavenly  origin  of  this  witness  which  the  Chris¬ 
tian  has.  Neither  did  Calvin  conceive  it  as  dispensing  with  the  neces¬ 
sity  for  grounds  or  reasons  of  faith;  he  unfolds  these  in  an  entire 
Chapter, — i.  8.  The  Witness  of  the  Spirit  lies  back  of  all  grounds 
and  is  necessary  in  order  that  the  objective  evidence  may  have  any 
effect  on  the  sin-darkened  mind.  On  Calvin’s  doctrine  of  the  Witness 
of  the  Spirit,  vid.  B.  B.  Warfield,  “Calvin’s  Doctrine  of  the  Knowledge 
of  God.”  Princeton  Theol.  Review,  viii,  pp.  2i9ff,  especially  pp. 
262 ff ;  also  Pannier,  Le  Temoignage  Du  Saint-Esprit,  pp.  63-116.  For 
the  history  of  the  doctrine  in  France  after  the  time  of  Calvin  vid. 
Pannier,  op.  cit.  pp.  136I 

The  Reformed  theologians  of  the  age  following  Calvin  expounded 
this  doctrine  in  the  same  profound  way  that  Calvin  conceived  it.  They 
taught  that  the  Bible  is  self-evidencing,  bearing  its  own  marks  of 
divine  origin ;  that  man  is  blinded  by  sin  and  cannot  attain  true  or 
saving  faith  by  means  of  arguments  or  the  “criteria”  of  divine 
authorship  in  the  Bible ;  that  true  faith  and  full  certitude  are  due  to  the 
regenerating  and  illuminating  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  on  the  sinful 
heart.  The  Testimony  of  the  Spirit  for  these  theologians,  then,  is 
this  work  of  the  Spirit,  and  its  effect  is  not  a  blind  conviction  without 
grounds,  nor  a  mystical  revelation  of  truth,  but  a  well-grounded  as¬ 
surance  of  faith.  Thus,  for  example,  Ursinus,  Loci.  pp.  437ff,  “Uni- 
cum  testimonium  est,  solis  Christi  spiritu  renatis  proprium  et  his  solis 
cognitum,  cuius  ea  vis  est,  ut  non  modo  veritatem  doctrinae  propheticae 
et  apostolicae  abunde  in  animis  nostris  testetur  et  obsignet,  sed  corda 
etiam  ad  amplectandam  earn  et  sequendam  efficaciter  flectat  et  permo- 
ve’at”.  Arguments  are  to  be  used  to  confirm  faith  but  this  Testimony 
of  the  Spirit  alone  makes  us  “acquiesce”  in  God’s  Word — “Quamvis 
enim  hoc  solum  efficit,  ut  in  verbo  -Dei  acquiescamus,  et  solum  etiam 
nobis  abunde  satisfacere  debet :  videbimus  tamen  ipsam  quoque  Scrip- 
turam  postquam  in  isto  summa  certitudinis  et  consolationis  nostrae  con- 
stituit,  etiam  relique  in  medium  affere,  idque  non  sine  ratione.”  Also 
Zanchius,  Op.  viii,  332-334,  says  that  the  testimony  of  no  man  can 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  6 J 

Bavinck  in  Holland,  and  Charles  Hodge  in  America.17  In 
Britain  it  was  fully  stated  by  such  writers  as  Owen,  Whit- 

render  us  certain  of  the  divine  origin  of  Scripture.  Neither  can  the 
Church  give  the  Spirit  who  is  the  author  of  true  faith.  Not  even  the 
Scripture  can  do  this,  for  though  its  divinity  shines  like  the  sun,  the 
spiritually  blind  cannot  discern  it.  This  is  done  only  by  the  work  of 
the  Spirit  illuminating  the  mind.  “Si  Scriptura  S.  hoc  ex  se  sola  posset 
praestare,  omnes  qui  illam  aut  audiunt,  aut  legunt,  etiam  agnoscerent, 
esse  verbum  Dei,  cum  revera  sit  verbum  Dei.  Non  omnes  hoc  novunt, 
etsi  legunt  et  audiunt  .  .  .  Etsi  igitur  Scriptura  in  se  lumen  est 
lucernaque ;  accensa  imo  Sol  splendidissimus :  tamen  sicut  Sol  non  potest 
sese  caeco  homini  quis  et  qualis  sit  patefacere,  nisi  caecus  aliunde 
illuminetur :  Ita  Scriptura  non  potest  sese  agnoscendam  re  ipsa  prae- 
bere  cuipiam  homini,  nisi  Spiritu  S.  mens  hominis  ad  videndam 
Scripturae  dignitatem  illustretur;  ac  aures  ad  auriendum  Deum  in 
illis  loquentem,  aperiantur.  Quare  neque  Scriptura  sua  sola  dignitate  et 
auctoritate  quam  habet  sine  Spiritu  sancto  sufficit  ad  hoc,  ut  quis  earn 
agnoscat  certum  esse  Dei  verbum”.  Zanchius  does  not  undervalue 
arguments  such  as  the  testimony  of  the  Church;  he  simply  asserts 
the  necessity  of  the  work  of  the  Spirit  on  the  heart  before  it  can  be 
convinced  by  evidence.  One  important  point  to  notice  is  that  Zanchius 
does  not,  like  the  Lutherans,  identify  the  Testimony  of  the  Spirit  with 
the  saving  efficacy  of  the  Scripture,  but  expressly  distinguishes  this 
latter  as  one  of  the  marks  of  the  divine  origin  of  the  Scripture,  from 
the  Testimony  of  the  Spirit  which  gives  effect  to  all  the  evidence — 
“Multas  variasque  Scripturae  ipsius  demonstrationes,  turn  ab  ipsius  in 
nobis  vi  et  efficacia,  turn  a  multis  aliis  rebus  et  effectis  extra  nos 
desumptas :  quibus  tanquam  sigillis  veritas  in  nobis  per  Spiritum  S. 
obsignatur,  ac  nos  in  ilia  magis  ac  magis  quotidie  confirmamur,  hanc 
sacram  Scripturam  verum  ac  vivum  esse  sermonem  Dei.”  This 
testimony  is  an  internal  illuminating  power  of  the  Spirit  of  God  in 
the  heart — “Testimonium  Spiritus  S.  intus  in  corde  nobis  testificantis 
et  persuadentis,  hoc  esse  verbum  Dei :  et  simul  mentem  illuminantis, 
et  coelestem  veritatem  atque  excellentiam  verbi  ostendentis;  atque  ita 
efficientis,  ut  nos  non  solum  certo  credamus,  sed  etiam  vere  agnos- 
camus,  Deum  esse  eum,  qui  in  Scripturis  loquitur”.  Similarly  vid. 
Wollebius,  Compend.  Theol.  Christ,  pp.  3  and  4 — In  answer  to  the 
question  how  the  “divinity  of  Scripture”  is  recognized  by  us,  he  says  that 
the  witness  to  this  is  twofold — “principial”  and  “instrumental”  or  “min¬ 
isterial”.  The  latter  is  the  testimony  of  the  Church,  the  former  is  the 
testimony  of  the  Spirit  externally  in  the  Scripture  which  He  inspired. 
But  this  external  Witness  is  efficacious  only  by  the  internal  Witness  of 
the  Spirit  in  the  heart — “Testimonium  autem  hoc  duplex  principiale  et 
ministrale.  Principiale  est  testimonium  Spiritus  sancti ;  foris  in  ipsa 
Scriptura ;  intus  vero  in  corde  ac  mente  hominis  fidelis  ab  ipso  illumi- 
nati,  loquentis,  eique  Scripturae  divinitatem  persuadentis.  Ministrale 
vero  testimonium  est  testimonium  Ecclesiae.”  The  same  truths  are 


68 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


aker,  Gillespie  and  others.18  The  doctrine  was  not  only  not 
made  use  of  by  the  Arminian  theologians,  but  its  validity  was 

taught  by  Piscator,  Explicatio  Aphor.  Doct.  Christ.  Aph.  vi.  p.  94 — 
True  faith  in  the  “authority”  of  Scripture  is  due  to  the  Witness  of  the 
Spirit,  because,  though  the  Scripture  is  avroiruTTOs,  man  is  blinded  by 
sin — “Et  si  autem  haec  scriptura  fidem  apud  omnes  meretur,  tanquam 
0€O7rvevcrTOs  et  avTomcrro' > :  tamen  testimonio  Spiritus  sancti  sanciri 
earn  in  cordibus  nostris  oportet,  ut  nobis  certa  eius  constet  authoritas, 
ac  proinde  ut  plenam  ei  fidem  habeamus.”  Piscator  illustrates  this 
from  the  inability  of  the  blind  to  see  the  sun — “Etsi  sol  clarissime 
lucet,  tamen  lumen  ejus  videre  non  potest  caecus;  ut  autem  videat, 
necesse  est  illuminari  oculos  ejus  luce  interiore.  Ita  nos  natura  sumus 
caeci  in  videndis  rebus  divinis  clarissime  in  Scriptura  propositis ;  ut 
autem  eas  videamus,  necesse  est  illuminari  oculos  mentis  nostrae  per 
Spiritum  sanctum.”  Maresius,  Systema  Breve  Universae  Theol.  p.  11, 
brings  out  the  following  points — 1.  the  Witness  is  both  objective  and 
internal ;  2.  it  does  not  produce  a  “blind”  faith,  but  is  through  the 
marks  of  God’s  hand  in  Scripture;  3.  it  is  an  illumination  of  the  mind 
to  see  the  divinity  of  Scripture;  4.  it  produces  full  certitude  and  true 
faith;  5.  it  witnesses  to  the  divine  origin  of  Scripture — “Sed  quamvis 
haec  et  similia  argumenta  sive  motiva,  impiis  redarguendis  et  con- 
vincendis  apprime  inserviant,  tamen  ut  quis  certitudine  fidei  persuadea- 
tur  Scripturam  esse  a  Deo,  .  .  .  opus  habet  testimonio  interno  Sp. 
Sancti  per  illam  ipsam  Scripturam  efficacis,  in  quod  fides  sua  ultimo 
resolvatur,  tanquam  in  sui  causam  efficientem  principialem  .  .  .  Hac 
autem  persuasione  nihil  certius ;  cum  lumen  fidei  ita  se  menti  insinuet; 
ut  per  illud  fidelis  non  solum  credat,  sed  etiam  se  bene  et  vere  credere 
certo  sentiat.”  Maccovius,  Loci  Communes.  Cap.  4,  pp.  27,  28,  teaches 
that  the  arguments  for  the  divine  authority  of  Scripture  are  not 
efficient  without  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  which  is  of  the  nature  of 
an  illuminating  of  the  mind — “Verum  enim  vero  haec  argumenta  omnia 
parum  momenti  adferunt  ad  credendum,  nisi  accesserit  illuminatio 
mentis  nostrae  facta  per  Spiritum  Sanctum,  quam  vocamus  testimonium 
Sp.  Sancti.  Testimonium  autem  Sp.  S.  est  lux  quaedam  ita  mentem 
perfundens,  ut  earn  leniter  afficiat,  ostendatque  rationes  ipsi  rei,  quae 
credenda  proponitur,  insitas,  sed  antea  occultas”.  Wendelin  teaches 
precisely  the  same  doctrine, — Christianae  Theol.  Libri,  i.  p.  23 — “Quaeri- 
tur  inter  nos  et  Pontificos ;  Unde  pendeant  Scripturae  autoritas  quoad 
nos?  Seu,  unde  constet  Scripturam  esse  divinam,  vel  a  Deo  inspiratam? 
Nos  statuimus  principialiter  id  constare :  (1)  Ex  persuasione  Spiritus 
sancti,  qui  de  divinitate  sacrae  Scripturae  nos  certos  facit.”  Precisely 
the  same  is  the  view  of  Heidegger,  Corp.  Theol.  Loc.  ii.  Secs.  12,  13, 
14,  15,  p.  28.  The  Spirit  of  truth  opens  the  eyes  of  our  hearts  which 
are  spiritually  blind,  so  that  we  see  the  divinity  manifest  in  God’s 
Word — “Hie  oculos  nostros  illuminat,  ut  videant  in  verbo  ab  ipsomet 
inspirato  Divinitatis  et  0eo7T/oc7reias  omnis  radios.  Ille,  ceu  sigillum 
Dei,  quo  obsignati  sumus,  2  Cor.  1 :22,  nos  turn  per  argumenta  Divini- 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  69 

denied.19  This  was  only  the  natural  consequence  of  their 
naturalistic  minimizing  of  the  saving  work  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  on  the  heart.  And  the  same  thing  was  true  of  the 
Socinians.20  In  the  eighteenth  century  it  was  reduced  to 

tatis  in  verbo  Dei  splendentia  turn  supra  ea,  turn  contra  argumenta,  quae 
caro  et  sanguis  eidem  opponit,  certos  reddit,  quod  verbum  Scripturae 
a  Deo  et  Deo  dignum  sit”.  No  full  historical  sketch  of  the  doctrine 
of  these  theologians  has  been  given.  Some  material  will  be  found  in 
Heppe,  Die  Dogmatik  der  evangelisch-reformirten  Kirche,  pp.  20-22. 
The  doctrine  also  found  expression  in  the  Reformed  Symbols  such  as 
the  Gallican  Confession,  the  Belgic  Confession,  the  Anglican  Confes¬ 
sion,  and  the  first  and  second  Helvetic  Confessions;  also  in  the  Nether¬ 
lands  Confession,  vid.  Muller,  Die  Bekenntnisschriften  der  Reformirten 
Kirche;  and  also  Pannier,  op.  cit.,  pp.  124-136.  Probably  its  best  and 
most  adequate  confessional  statement  is  that  in  the  Westminster  Con¬ 
fession  i.  S — “We  may  be  moved  and  induced  by  the  testimony  of  the 
Church  to  a  high  and  reverent  esteem  for  the  Holy  Scriptures ;  and 
the  heavenliness  of  the  matter,  the  efficacy  of  the  doctrine,  the  majesty 
of  the  style,  the  consent  of  all  the  parts,  the  scope  of  the  whole  (which 
is  to  give  all  glory  to  God),  the  full  discovery  it  makes  of  the  only 
way  of  man’s  salvation,  the  many  and  incomparable  excellencies,  and 
the  entire  perfection  thereof,  are  arguments  whereby  it  doth  abundantly 
evidence  itself  to  be  the  word  of  God;  yet,  notwithstanding,  our  full 
persuasion  and  assurance  of  the  infallible  truth,  and  divine  authority 
thereof,  is  from  the  inward  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  bearing  witness 
by  and  with  the  word,  in  our  hearts”. 

17  Van  Oostersee,  Christian  Dogmatics,  i.  pp.  149-154.  Kuyper, 
Encyclopaedic  Der  Heilige  Godgeleerdheid,  ii,  pp.  501-511.  H.  Bavinck, 
Gereformeerde  Dogmatiek2,  i,  pp.  621-647.  Charles  Hodge,  Systematic 
Theology,  iii,  p.  69;  also  Way  of  Life,  pp.  13-28. 

“John  Owen,  The  Reason  of  Faith,  Works,  vol.  iv.  pp.  1-100,  espec¬ 
ially  pp.  82ff.  William  Whitaker,  A  Disputation  on  Holy  Scripture,  pp. 
332-358.  George  Gillespie,  Works,  vol.  ii,  pp.  iosff.  John  Ball,  A 
Treatise  of  Faith,  pp.  13,  14.  John  Arrowsmith,  Chain  of  Principles, 
pp.  103,  104.  W.  Lyford,  Principles  of  Faith  and  Good  Conscience, 
p.  2;  The  Plain  Man’s  Senses  Exercised,  p.  38.  John  White,  A  Way  to 
the  Tree  of  Life,  pp.  44,  45.  Edward  Reynolds,  Works,  vol  v.  pp.  154, 
155.  Cf.  B.  B.  Warfield,  “The  Westminster  Doctrine  of  Holy  Scrip¬ 
ture,”  in  The  Presbyterian  and  Reformed  Review,  iv.  pp.  626 ff. 

“ Episcopius,  Instit.  Theol.  iv.'i  cap.  5;  Parag.  2.  Limborch,  Theol. 
Christiana,  i.  4:  parags.  15-17.  In  the  case  of  these  Remonstrant  the¬ 
ologians  fides  humana  and  rational  arguments  are  substituted  for  the 
fides  divina  and  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit.  This  was  the  natural  result 
of  their  semi-Pelagian  ideas. 

20  The  Socinians  also  rejected  the  doctrine  of  the  Witness  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  holding  that  everything  must  be  proved  by  reason,  vid. 
Fock,  Der  Socinianismus,  p.  336. 


70 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


the  argument  from  experience  by  some  of  the  Supra- 
naturalists  and  Rationalists,  as  for  example  Baumgarten; 
and  denied  by  others,  such  as  Wegscheider.21  The  at¬ 
tempted  revival  of  the  doctrine  by  Schleiermacher22  in 
reaction  from  Rationalism  was  only  a  spurious  one,  being 
wholly  vitiated  by  the  identification  of  the  Holy  Spirit  with 
the  spirit  of  man,  and  the  reduction  of  the  Witness  to  an 
argument  from  experience;  while  its  attempted  revival  in 
Holland  by  Scholten  did  not  rise  in  its  conception  above  the 
argument  from  experience.23 

In  the  second  place  it  is  necessary  to  determine  as  briefly 
as  possible  the  “content”  or  “object”  of  this  Witness  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  to  the  Bible.  To  what  in  regard  to  the  Bible 
is  this  testimony  given?  This  witnessing,  of  course,  is  a 
part  of  the  entire  saving  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the 
heart  of  the  sinner.  It  is  not  something  separate  from  the 

21  Baumgarten,  Dogmatik,  pp.  i2off.  reduced  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit 
to  the  argument  from  experience.  This  is  true  also  of  Less,  Beweis 
der  Wahrheit  der  christl.  Relig.  pp.  141,  143 ;  and  also  of  Reinhard, 
Dogmatik,  p.  65.  Having  been  reduced  thus  by  the  Supra-naturalists 
to  the  argument  from  experience,  it  was  rejected  altogether  by  the 
Rationalists,  vid.  Brettschneider,  Handbuch  der  Dogmatik,  i.  p.  206 ; 
Wegscheider,  Inst.  Theol.  For  an  account  of  the  treatment  of  the 
doctrine  in  the  eighteenth  century  Rationalism  cf.  Martius,  op.  cit.,  pp. 
26  ff. 

22  Schleiermacher,  Der  christl.  Glaube,  parag.  142:2.  The  Testimony 
of  the  Spirit  is,  according  tp  Schleiermacher,  given  through  the  media-, 
tion  of  Christians  in  the  Church.  The  Witness  is,  therefore,  the  testi¬ 
mony  of  the  collective  experience  of  Christians  to  the  Scripture,  and 
though  it  gains  thus  a  certain  amount  of  objectivity  in  reference  to  the 
individual  Christian,  it  does  not  go  beyond  the  argument  from  ex¬ 
perience.  Moreover  the  identification  of  the  Holy  Spirit  with  the 
collective  consciousness  of  Christians,  does  away  with  the  very  foun¬ 
dation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Reformers.  It  is  characteristic  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Reformers,  and  in  this  they  followed  the  Scriptures 
closely,  always  to  insist  on  the  essential  distinction  between  the  Spirit 
of  God  and  the  finite  spirit,  and  to  maintain  the  personality  and 
transcendence  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Schleiermacher’s  attempted  revival 
of  the  doctrine  was  a  spurious  one.  • 

23  Scholten  reduces  the  Witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  the  argument 
from  experience  and  describes  it  as  the  “testimony  of  the  heart  and 
conscience”  which  are  “purified  by  communion  with  Christ”.  Cf.  Van 
Oostersee,  op.  cit.,  i.  p.  152. 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  71 

whole  of  the  Christian  life.  The  Spirit  does  guide  into  all 
truth;  brings  us  to  confess  Christ  as  Lord;  testifies  to  the 
glory  of  Christ;  makes  believers  know  all  things  which  have 
been  given  them  by  God;  assures  them  of  Divine  Sonship. 
But  the  testimony  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  the  Bible,  though 
closely  connected  with  all  this,  is  additional  to  this,  and  is 
not  to  be  identified  with  the  gift  to  the  believer  of  assurance 
of  faith.  The  conception  which  has  been  stated  of  the  na¬ 
ture  of  this  Witness  determines  its  object.  If  it  were  a 
blind  and  groundless  testimony,  or  the  mystical  communi¬ 
cation  of  a  proposition,  then  it  might  be  supposed  to  in¬ 
clude  questions  the  determination  of  which  must  rest  solely 
upon  historical  and  critical  and  exegetical  grounds.  If  we 
are  to  conceive  of  the  Spirit  as  giving  to  the  soul  a  truth 
such  as — “The  Bible  is  God’s  Word”,  why  might  He  not 
say  to  us  such  and  such  a  book  is  canonical  or  is  not  can¬ 
onical,  or  that  the  Bible  is  plenarily  inspired?  But  the 
Witness  is  not  the  mystical  communication  of  a  truth,  nor 
the  causing  to  emerge  in  consciousness  of  a  blind  and  un¬ 
founded  faith.  Hence  it  does  not  witness  to  ques¬ 
tions  which  are  to  be  determined  by  exegetical  and  historical 
considerations.  The  Spirit,  then,  does  not  testify  to  the 
nature  or  extent  of  the  Bible’s  inspiration.  These  are  ques¬ 
tions  to  be  exegetically  determined,  and  which  can  be  de¬ 
termined  in  no  other  way.  Of  course  after  we  have  de¬ 
termined  what  is  the  Bible’s  doctrine  of  inspiration,  we 
must  ask  whether  it  is  true.  And  here  the  evidences  for 
the  truth  of  the  Bible/must  be  brought  in.  And  the  efficacy 
of  these  on  the  heart  will  depend  on  the  work  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  Nevertheless  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  is  not  to 
the  nature  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible.  An  examination 
of  the  passages  already  cited  from  the  old  Reformed  the¬ 
ologians  will  show  that  they  did  not  conceive  of  the  testi¬ 
mony  of  the  Spirit  as  being  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Inspiration 
of  Scripture.  Piscator,24  it  is  true,  used  the  term  deoTrvev- 

21 Cf .  passages  cited  from  the  Reformed  Theologians  in  note  No.  16. 
By  using  the  term  “inspiration,”  in  this  connection,  to  denote  the  divine 
origin  of  Scripture,  the  Reformed  Theologians  did  not  make  the  mistake 


72 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


<rro9  in  speaking  of  that  to  which  the  Spirit  bears  witness, 
but  the  passage  shows  that  he  did  not  intend  any  particular 
doctrine  of  Inspiration,  but  rather  the  divine  origin  of  the 
Scripture.  In  this  he  agreed  with  the  other  theologians 
cited  who  constantly  spoke  of  the  “divinity  of  Scripture” 
and  said  that  this  shone  forth  from  it  like  the  rays  of  the 
sun. 


of  supposing  that  the  question  of  the  nature  of  the  Bible’s  inspiration 
could  be  determined  otherwise  than  by  the  exegesis  of  the  statements 
of  the  Scripture  writers  concerning  the  subject. 

Quite  different  from  this,  however,  is  the  view  of  W.  Robertson 
Smith,  followed  by  T.  Lindsay,  James  Denney,  J.  P.  Lilley,  M.  Dods, 
C.  A.  Briggs  and  others.  These  writers  suppose  that  the  term  “in¬ 
spiration”  as  applied  to  Scripture  denotes  simply  the  fact  that  the 
Bible  is  a  means  of  grace  through  the  influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit  on 
the  heart.  This,  according  to  them,  constitutes  its  “inspiration.”  On 
this  view  we  recognize  the  divine  origin  and  truth  of  the  Scripture  by 
the  Spirit’s  Witness  through  its  saving  power,  and  it  is  this  saving 
power  which  gives  the  Scripture  its  authority,  and  which  constitutes 
its  “inspiration.”  In  this  way  the  idea  of  inspiration  is  lowered  by  the 
attempt  to  determine  its  nature,  not  by  exegesis,  but  by  asking  what 
we  find  the  Bible  to  be.  Hence  our  idea  of  Scripture  is  substituted  for 
that  of  the  Bible  concerning  its  own  nature,  and  Scripture  is  regarded 
as  a  rule  of  faith  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  means  of  grace.  The 
Witness  of  the  Spirit,  therefore,  instead  of  confirming  the  authority 
of  Scripture,  as  it  did  in  the  Reformed  Theology,  becomes  a  means 
of.  erecting  a  subjective  norm  above  the  Bible,  thus  doing  away  with 
its  authority  as  a  rule  of  faith.  Moreover  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit, 
being  thus  reduced  to  the  experience  of  the  saving  power  of  the 
Scripture,  is  supposed  to  be  given  directly  or  immediately  to  so 
much  of  the  historical  element  in  the  Bible  as  our  Christian  con¬ 
sciousness  finds  essential.  This  essential  part,  it  is  supposed,  will  be 
left  untouched  by  historical  criticism  which  may  do  as  it  pleases  with 
the  supposedly  non-essential  parts  of  Scripture.  In  this  way  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  supposed  to  be  rendered  independent  of  the  results  of  his¬ 
torical  criticism,  in  very  much  the  same  manner  as  the  Ritschlian 
theologians  believe  it  to  be.  A  false  subjectivism  is  thus  introduced 
through  the  mistake  of  seeking  to  determine  in  a  subjective  way 
questions  which  can  be  settled  only  by  an  objective  investigation  of 
historical  evidence.  This  entire  view  rests  upon  the  mistake  of  sup¬ 
posing  that,  because  saving  faith  is  personal  trust  and  not  a  mere 
intellectual  assent,  therefore  its  content  cannot  be  given  by  an  ob¬ 
jective  communication  of  truth  by  God.  Hence  Ritschl  and  his  fol¬ 
lowers  maintained  that  the  Reformation  idea  of  faith  rendered  neces¬ 
sary  a  new  idea  of  revelation  and  inspiration,  and  they  also  claimed 
that  they  were  the  true  successors  of  Calvin  and  Luther.  In  this  they 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  73 

Neither  is  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  to  the  Canonicity  of 
any  or  all  of  the  Biblical  books.  The  Witness,  not  being 
the  communication  of  any  new  knowledge  or  matter  of  fact, 
does  not  inform  the  Christian  what  books  the  Apostles  im¬ 
posed  on  the  infant  Church  to  be  its  rule  of  faith  and  prac¬ 
tice.  This  is  a  question  which  requires  historical  investi¬ 
gation  and  which  must  be  determined  upon  historical 
grounds.  The  appeal,  from  objective  scientific  consider¬ 
ations  to  the  internal  life  of  the  Christian  for  the  settlement 
of  such  questions,  is  not  only  vain;  it  has  been  used  in  the 
interests  of  an  attempt  to  elevate  the  human  mind  and  the 
Christian  consciousness  above  the  Scripture  in  a  rationalistic 
spirit  which  accepts  only  what  appeals  to  us.  It  is  true  that 
the  old  Protestant  theologians  did  sometimes  speak  as  if 
the  Holy  Spirit  bore  witness  to  the  Canonicity  of  the  books 
of  Scripture,  but  in  regard  to  this  two  remarks  should  be 
made.  First,  this  is  not  their  prevalent  way  of  putting  the 
matter.  They  almost  invariably  conceive  of  the  Witness 


were  followed  by  W.  Robertson  Smith  and  the  writers  above  men¬ 
tioned,  all  of  whom  suppose  that  the  seventeenth  century  theologians 
departed  from  the  religious  view  of  the  first  Reformers.  They  are 
mistaken  in  this.  Calvin,  as  we  have  seen,  believed  that  the  Witness 
of  the  Spirit  is  to  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible.  The  nature  of  in¬ 
spiration  is  to  be  determined  objectively  by  exegesis,  and  the  Canon 
also  objectively  by  historical  investigation.  We  believe  the  Bible  ulti¬ 
mately  because  the  Spirit  enables  us  to  see  that  it  is  from  God,  but 
that  does  not  in  the  least  affect  the  truth  that  we  are  to  seek  to  deter¬ 
mine  by  exegesis  what  it  says  as  to  its  inspiration.  It  is  true  that  a 
mechanical  view  of  inspiration  was  held  by  some  of  the  Protestant 
theologians  of  the  17th  and  18th  centuries,  but  the  majority  of 
them  taught  the  same  high  view  held  by  Calvin  and  all  of  the 
early  Reformers. 

On  the  view  which  we  have  been  criticising,  see  W.  Robertson  Smith, 
What  History  Teaches  Us  to  Seek  in  the  Bible,  Lectures  and  Essays, 
Ed.  by  J.  S.  Black  and  G.  W.  Chrystal,  pp.  207ff. ;  and  especially  Answer 
to  the  Form  of  Libel,  pp.  i8ff ;  T.  M.  Lindsay,  “Professor  W.  Robertson 
Smith’s  Doctrine  of  Scripture,”  Expositor,  Series  iv.  vol.  10,  pp.  241  ff ; 
also  the  Doctrine  of  Scripture,  ibid.  Series  v.  vol.  1,  pp.  278fF.  J. 
Denney,  Studies  in  Theology,  pp.  2041! ;  M,  Dods,  The  Bible.  Its 
Origin  and  Nature,  pp.  I23ff,  I35ff ;  J.  P.  Lilley,  Commentary  on  the 
Pastoral  Epistles,  Appendix,  p.  104;  C.  A.  Briggs,  Introduction  to  the 
Study  of  Holy  Scripture,  pp.  i65ff. 


74 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


of  the  Spirit  as  being  to  the  “divinity”  i.e.  to  the  divine 
origin  of  the  Scripture;  and  secondly,  when  they  use  the 
term  Canon  and  Canonicity,  they  use  it  in  a  twofold  sense 
to  denote  at  once  the  idea  of  the  extent  of  the  canon  of 
Scripture  and  the  idea  of  the  divine  origin-  and  authority 
of  Scripture.  And  when  they  speak  of  Canonicity  as  being 
the  object  of  the  Witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  it  is  the  latter 
idea  to  which  they  usually  refer.  This  is  true  for  example 
in  the  case  of  Quenstedt,25  and  it  is  true  also  of  the  Re¬ 
formed  theologians.  Calvin  has  been  supposed  to  have 
held  that  the  Spirit  testified  concerning  what  books  are 
canonical,  but  this  rests  upon  misapprehension.26  Calvin’s 

25  B.  B.  Warfield,  Princeton  Theol.  Rev.,  vol.  viii,  p.  291. 

28  Cf.  B.  B.  Warfield,  ibid.,  pp.  283ft.  Reuss,  History  of  the  Canon,  etc. 
Chap.  16,  and  Pannier,  op.  cit.,  p.  252,  both  seem  to  suppose  that 
Calvin  sought  to  determine  the  Canon  of  Scripture  by  means  of  the 
Witness  of  the  Spirit.  This  rests,  as  Dr.  Warfield  has  shown,  on  the 
misapprehension  of  two  passages  from  Calvin.  In  Inst.  i.  7:1,  repelling 
the  Romish  idea  that  the  Scripture  has  only  such  weight  as  the 
Church  gives  it,  Calvin  says,  “For  thus  dealing  with  the  Holy  Spirit 
as  a  mere  laughing  stock,  they  ask,  Who  shall  give  us  confidence  that 
these  (Scriptures)  have  come  from  God, — who  assure  us  that  they 
have  reached  our  time  safe  and  intact, — who  persuade  us  that  one 
book  should  be  received  reverently,  another  expunged  from  the  num¬ 
ber, — if  the  Church  should  not  prescribe  a  certain  rule  for  all  these 
things.  It  depends,  therefore,  they  say,  on  the  Church,  both  what 
reverence  is  due  Scripture,  and  what  books  should  be  inscribed  in  her 
catalogue.”  This  quotation  shows  that  the  Romanists  argued  that  the 
Church  assures  us  of  the  contents  and  even  the  integrity  of  Scripture. 
But  Calvin  does  not  say  that  we  are  assured  of  the  Canon  by  the 
Spirit.  He  says  that  the  Romish  view  is  wrong,  but  does  not  imply 
that  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  assures  us  of  all  these  things  which 
the  Church  pretends  to  settle. 

The  other  passage  is  in  the  Confession  of  La  Rochelle,  and  does 
apparently  attribute  the  determination  of  what  books  are  Canonical 
to  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit.  But  this  Article  was  not  by  Calvin, 
but  was  added  to  a  draft  submitted  by  Calvin  by  the  Synod  of  Paris. 
Calvin’s  own  article  did  not  contain  this  idea.  Pannier,  op.  cit.,  p.  141 
cites  Lespine,  a  Protestant  disputant  with  two  Doctors  of  the  Sor- 
bonne,  as  teaching  that  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  determines  the 
Canon,  but  only  indirectly  by  inference  from  the  divine  authorship  of 
the  books.  All  of  the  Reformed  Theologians  which  we  have  cited  in 
note  16,  taught  that  it  is  to  the  divine  origin  of  Scripture  that  the 
Witness  of  the  Spirit  is  given,  and  though  sometimes  the  word 
“canonical”  is  used,  it  seems  to  denote  the  idea  of  being  authoritative 
and  from  God. 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  75 

whole  discussion  shows  clearly  that  he  takes  the  Scriptures 
as  a  whole,  conceives  this  as  given  on  historical  and  critical 
grounds,  and  conceives  of  the  Testimony  of  the  Spirit  as 
being  to  the  divine  origin  of  the  Scripture. 

If,  however,  an  erroneous  mystical  view  of  the  nature 
of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  to  the  Bible  is  mistaken  in  con¬ 
ceiving  of  this  Witness  as  extending  to  exegetical  and  his- 
torico-critical  questions,  the  view  of  the  nature  of  the 
Spirit’s  Witness  which  confounds  it  with  the  argument 
from  experience  errs  in  limiting  the  object,  to  which  the 
Witness  is  given,  to  the  saving  truths  of  the  Bible  or  to  the 
truth  and  divine  origin  of  the  revelation  or  the  Gospel 
which  the  Bible  records.  If  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  is 
identified  with  the  testimony  of  Christian  experience,  it 
must  of  course  be  conceived  of  in  this  way.  For  Christian 
experience  testifies  not  so  much  to  the  Bible,  as  to  the  saving 
truths  of  the  Gospel,  and  from  these  truths  it  may  extend 
or  spread  till  it  covers  the  Bible  which  contains  these  truths. 
But  if  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  is  simply  the  experience  of 
the  saving  power  of  the  Gospel,  it  obviously  can  extend 
only  indirectly  to  the  Bible  as  a  whole,  and  only  indirectly 
also  to  any  fundamental  Christian  truths  which  transcend 
experience.  There  is  no  immediate  Witness  to  the  nature 
of  the  future  life  of  the  Christian,  any  more  than  there  is 
to  the  Virgin  Birth  of  Christ.  This  is  the  view  of  the 
modern  Lutherans  and  of  all  who  identify  the  Witness  of 
the  Spirit  with  the  argument  from  Christian  experience,  as 
well  as  of  some  who  do  not  fall  into  this  mistake.27  But 

27  In  the  case  of  Quenstedt  op.  cit.  p.  140,  it  is  not  so  clearly  stated 
that  it  is  the  “saving  truths  of  Scripture”  as  distinct  from  the  Scrip¬ 
ture,  to  which  the  testimony  is  given.  Baier  op.  cit.,  p.  86,  in  the 
passage  already  cited  regards  the  testimony  of  the  Spirit  as  being 
given  to  the  “doctrines  comprehended  in  the  Scriptures”.  Hollaz  says 
that  it  is  the  “written  word”  which  we  “read  from”  these  Scripture 
books,  cf.  op.  cit.,  125.  It  cannot  be  said,  however,  that  the  old 
Lutheran  theologians  carried  out  the  logic  of  their  view  of  the  nature 
of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit,  so  as  to  make  a  sharp  distinction  be¬ 
tween  the  saving  truths  which  the  Scripture  contains  and  the  Scripture 
itself.  This  has  been  done  by  Klaiber,  op.  cit.,  pp.  I7f,  3of,  Martius 
op:  cit.  p.  43,  Philippi,  op.  cit.  i.  pp.  135B  This  also  is  the  view  of 


y6  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

this  idea  of  the  object  of  the  Spirit’s  Witness  results  from 
a  wrong  view  of  its  nature.  There  is  a  witness  of  our  ex¬ 
perience  to  the  saving  truths  of  the  Gospel,  such  as  Justifi¬ 
cation,  Divine  Sonship,  the  power  of  Christ  to  save.  The 
divine  origin  of  these  great  truths  may  be  inferred  from 
the  experience  of  their  saving  power,  as  may  also  the  divine 
origin  of  the  Bible  which  contains  them.  But  since  this  is 
after  all  the  witness,  not  of  God  to  us,  but  of  our  experience 
to  the  Word  of  God,  it  can  bear  direct  witness  only  to  that 
which  it  feels  to  be  divine. 

The  Witness  of  the  Spirit  is  the  Witness  of  God  to  us. 
It  therefore  proceeds  in  the  opposite  way  from  the  argu¬ 
ment  from  experience.  It  is  a  witness  to  the  Bible  itself 
as  such  and  as  a  whole,  and  hence  by  inference  we  may  pro¬ 
ceed  to  infer  the  divine  and  revelatory  character  of  the 
contents  of  the  Scripture.  When  our  eyes  have  been  opened 
and  our  spiritual  blindness  has  been  removed,  we  can  see 
in  the  Bible  itself  all  the  marks  of  its  divine  authorship. 
The  saving  power  of  some  of  these  truths  is  only  one  of 
these  marks.  It  is  the  Book  itself  which  we  are  enabled  by 
the  Spirit  to  perceive  could  have  its  origin  only  from  God. 
When  with  unclouded  spiritual  eyes  we  look  upon  the  Bible 
as  a  whole,  we  immediately  see  the  evident  marks  of  its 
divine  authorship,  just  as  one  with  aesthetic  sense  sees  the 
marks  of  the  master  in  the  masterpiece.  The  Witness  of 
the  Spirit,  therefore,  is  not  to  the  revelation  contained  in 
Scripture  which  “finds  us”  and  thence  to  the  Scripture  as  a 
whole,  but  directly  to  the  divine  origin  of  the  Scripture  as  a 
whole,  spreading  from  this  to  its  contents.  It  does  not, 
therefore,  assure  us  immediately  of  the  Virgin  Birth  or  of 
the  Resurrection  of  Christ,  any  more  than  it  does  of  the 
truth  of  the  Old  Testament  history  or  the  doctrine  of 

such  Reformed  theologians  as  Van  Oostersee,  op.  cit.  i.  p.  151,  and  H. 
Bavinck,  op.  cit.,  pp.  639ff.  Bavinck  conceives  the  Testimony  of  the 
Spirit  as  given  directly  to  the  doctrines  of  Scripture,  and  as  spreading 
from  them  to  the  historical  parts  of  Scripture  with  which  they  are 
inseparably  connected.  John  De  Witt,  op.  cit.  p.  81,  also  conceives  the 
Testimony  of  the  Spirit  as  being  given  to  the  saving  truths  of  the 
Gospel  contained  in  the  Scripture. 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  77 

eternal  punishment.  But  it  does  assure  us  that  this  Book 
is  of  divine  origin  and  authority  so  that  it  supports  these 
great  facts  and  truths  mediately  and  by  way  of  inference. 
It  is,  in  a  word,  simply  this> — God  has  left  the  marks  of  His 
authorship  on  the  Bible,  and  the  Spirit  of  God  opens  our 
eyes  to  behold  in  Scripture  the  marks  of  its  divine  author¬ 
ship  or  origin. 

The  third  question  which  arises  concerns  the  bearing  of 
this  doctrine  of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  upon  the  value  and 
necessity  of  Christian  Apologetics  which  aims  at  an  ob¬ 
jectively  valid  and  rational  defence  of  the  Christian  view 
of  the  world  and  the  divine  and  supernatural  origin  of 
Christianity  and  of  the  Bible.  Does  the  fact  that,  because 
of  the  blindness  of  the  sinful  heart,  faith  is  the  gift  of 
God’s  Spirit,  do  away  with  the  value  or  necessity  of  evi¬ 
dence  for  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible  ?  In  seeking  briefly 
to  answer  this  question,  three  things  must  be  kept  in  mind. 
First,  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  is  not  a  ground  of  faith 
among  other  grounds.  It  cannot,  therefore,  be  substituted 
for  the  grounds  of  faith.  The  Holy  Spirit  in  Regeneration 
is  the  efficient  cause  of  faith.  We  believe,  therefore,  by 
means  of  this  Witness,  not  on  account  of  it.  The  Wit¬ 
ness,  therefore,  does  not  dispense  with  the  value  or  neces¬ 
sity  of  the  grounds  of  faith,  or  in  this  instance,  the  marks 
on  account  of  which  we  recognize  that  God  is  speaking  to 
us  in  the  Scripture.  It  is  true  that  we  must  be  gifted  with 
an  aesthetic  sense  in  order  to  recognize  the  masterpiece  or 
painting  and  to  discriminate  it  from  that  which  has  no 
aesthetic  value.  But  given  this  aesthetic  sense,  the  marks 
of  the  master’s  hand  must  be  present  in  the  work  of  art  or 
there  will  be  no  marks  for  us  to  see  and  recognize.  Just  so 
God’s  Spirit  opens  the  eye  of  faith,  but  that  eye  beholds  an 
object  and  recognizes  the  hand  of  God  in  the  Bible.  Second, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  reason  why  saving  faith  in 
Christ,  Christianity,  and  the  Bible  cannot  be  produced  by 
evidence  or  arguments,  is  not  due  to  any  insufficiency  of 
evidence  or  any  want  of  reasons  of  universal  validity  and 


yS  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

objective  character,  but  is  due  to  the  subjective  inability  of 
the  sinful  heart  to  be  affected  by  such  evidence.  If  the 
evidence  were  insufficient  or  invalid,  what  would  be  needed 
would  be  more  or  better  evidence.  But  such  additional 
evidence  the  Spirit  does  not  supply.  He  opens  the  sin- 
blinded  eyes  and  prepares  the  heart,  so  that  the  evidence 
may  have  its  proper  effect.  Third,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  saving  faith,  like  all  faith,  is  a  grounded  conviction. 
It  does  not  differ  from  knowledge  or  from  a  merely  “his¬ 
toric”  or  “speculative”  faith  in  that  the  latter  rests  on 
grounds  or  evidence  while  saving  faith  does  not.  Nor  is 
the  distinction  that  the  grounds  of  knowledge  and  of 
“speculative”  faith  are  objective,  valid  and  sufficient,  while 
those  of  saving  faith  are  not.  The  distinction  lies  in  the 
nature  of  the  evidence  and  in  the  source  of  the  mental  act 
in  each  case.  In  knowledge  the  conviction  of  mind  is  based 
on  the  internal  testimony  of  sense  perception,  self-conscious¬ 
ness,  and  reason.  In  the  case  of  faith,  the  conviction  is 
based  on  testimony  external  to  the  subject.  In  religious 
faith,  it  is  the  testimony  of  God  Himself.  In  reference  to 
the  Scripture,  God  has  borne  witness  in  it  to  His  own  author¬ 
ship,  and  faith  in  this  is  grounded  in  these  criteria  of  its 
divine  origin.  The  distincton  between  a  merely  speculative 
faith  in  God’s  Word  produced  by  evidence,  and  saving  faith 
and  trust  in  it,  lies  further  in  the  fact  that  the  source  of  the 
latter  consists  in  the  regenerating  and  illuminating  work  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  on  the  sinner’s  heart.  Because  you  cannot 
make  a  man  a  Christian  by  merely  presenting  him  with 
arguments  addressed  to  his  intellect,  it  does  not  by  any 
means  follow  that  he  can  be  made  a  Christian  apart  from 
all  evidence  of  the  truth  of  Christianity.  Nor  does  it  follow, 
because  you  cannot  argue  a  man  into  a  saving  belief  in  the 
divine  origin  of  the  Bible  without  the  work  of  God’s  Spirit 
in  his  heart,  that  therefore  all  such  evidence  is  valueless. 
True  faith  is  God’s  gift,  but  He  gives  no  blind  faith  and 
no  ready-made  faith.  He  prepares  our  hearts  and  minds  so 
that  the  evidence  of  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible  being 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  7Q 


presented,  the  prepared  heart  responds  to  the  evidence  be¬ 
cause  its  sinful  blindness  has  been  removed.  It  is  true, 
therefore,  that  saving  faith  will  not  arise  without  the  Wit¬ 
ness  of  the  Spirit,  but  neither  will  it  arise  without  some 
evidence  valid  for  the  subject  of  the  faith.  Let  us  em¬ 
phasize  the  fact  that  saving  faith  cannot  be  produced  by 
arguments,  not  even  by  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ, 
because  the  soul  is  dead  in  sin;  but  let  us  remember  that 
there  is  always  evidence  of  some  kind  present  when  saving 
faith  arises,  and  that  objectively  there  is  adequate  and 
sufficient  evidence  for  the  divine  origin  of  Christianity  and 
the  Bible,  and  that  this  is  logically  the  prius  of  our  personal 
act  of  faith.  The  Witness  of  the  Spirit,  therefore,  is  ab¬ 
solutely  necessary  to  Christian  faith  and  Christian  certi¬ 
tude.  Without  it  all  evidence  and  all  arguments  are  use¬ 
less  to  produce  any  true  faith  and  full  certitude  of  faith. 
Nevertheless  it  does  not  do  away  with  the  place  and  value 
of  the  evidence  both  internal  and  external  for  the  divine 
origin  of  Christianity  and  the  Bible. 

This  statement  will  enable  us  to  see  the  mistake  under¬ 
lying  two  chief  misconceptions  upon  this  point.  The  Ritsch- 
lian  theologians  with  their  distinction  between  religious 
and  theoretic  knowledge,  their  depreciation  of  Christian 
Apologetics,  and  their  doctrine  of  value- judgments,  have 
invariably  claimed  to  be  the  true  successors  of  Luther  and 
Calvin,  and  to  have  rescued  Protestantism  from  a  rational¬ 
istic  intellectualism.  They  thus  practically  identify  their 
idea  that  religious  knowledge  consists  in  “judgments  of 
value”  with  the  doctrine  of  the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  as 
taught  by  the  Reformers.  The  two  doctrines  are  totally 
different.  The  one  is  the  fruit  of  a  fundamental  religious 
agnosticism;  the  other  of  a  deep  evangelicalism.  They 
differ  first  in  regard  to  the  evidences  or  grounds  of  faith. 
According  to  the  Ritschlian,  these  are  not  objectively  valid 
or  rationally  sufficient.  There  is,  therefore,  a  deficiency  of 
universally  valid  evidence.  On  the  other  hand,  according  to 
the  old  Protestant  theologians,  this  deficiency  is  not  in  the 


8o 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


objective  evidence  but  in  the  spiritual  condition  of  the 
subject  of  faith.  The  evidence  fails  of  effect  because  the 
heart  is  spiritually  dead.  In  the  second  place,  there  is  a 
fundamental  difference  in  the  conception  of  the  subjective 
hindrance  to  a  rational  faith.  According  to  the  Ritschlian 
position  there  is  a  fundamental  dualism  between  the  heart 
and  the  head  apart  from  the  effect  of  sin,  a  dualism  which 
is  fatal  to  Christian  faith.  What  the  Ritschlian  means  to 
say  is  that  theoretic  knowledge  is  limited  to  phenomena,  and 
therefore  faith  has  free  scope  in  the  sphere  of  the  tran¬ 
scendent  objects  of  religious  faith.  But  this  separation  of 
spheres  is  impossible,  and  where  a  rationally  grounded  faith 
in  God  and  His  supernatural  modes  of  action  is  given  up, 
one  of  two  positions  only  remains,  each  fatal  to  Christian 
faith.  Either  we  must  say  that  with  the  heart  we  believe  in 
supernatural  Christianity  although  our  head  tells  us  it  is 
impossible,  in  which  case  faith  cannot  survive  because  it 
cannot  be  compelled ;  or  else  we  must  reduce  our  Christianity 
to  the  limits  of  our  philosophy  and  eliminate  from  it  all  that 
Naturalism  forbids  us  to  retain.  Then  we  shall  have  given 
up  supernatural  Christianity.  We  shall  not  even  be  able  to 
say  that  we  believe  in  the  Deity  of  Christ  because  of  His 
value  to  the  Christian  heart,  but  only  that  His  Deity  con¬ 
sists  in  His  value  to  the  Christian  heart.  Christianity  is 
thus  reduced  to  the  basis  of  the  bare  natural  religious  senti¬ 
ment.  In  all  this  there  is  a  fatal  dualism  between  the  head 
and  the  heart,  between  faith  and  knowledge,  which  is  in¬ 
curable  because  rooted  in  human  nature  as  such,  and  which 
does  away  with  the  rational  basis  of  all  religious  faith  and 
tends  to  reduce  the  religious  consciousness  to  a  merely  sub¬ 
jective  feeling  without  any  sure  objective  reference  or 
validity.28 

28  In  erecting  a  sharp  distinction  between  religious  and  theoretic 
knowledge,  such  as  is  found  in  Ritschl’s  Rechtfertigung  und  Versohn- 
ung  and  in  Herrmann’s  Verkehr  des  Christen  mit  Gott  and  his  early- 
work  Die  Religion  im  V erhdltniss  sum  Welterkennen  u.  sur  Sittlich- 
keit,  it  was  not  intended  to  assert  that  we  can  believe  a  thing  to  be 
true  on  one  set  of  grounds  and  know  it  to  be  false  or  impossible  on 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  8l 


Totally  different  from  this  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Witness 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  subjective  hindrance  here  is  super¬ 
induced  by  sin.  The  dualism  in  man  is  between  the  carnal 
mind  which  is  at  enmity  with  God  and  the  things  of  God’s 
Spirit  which  can  only  be  spiritually  discerned.  When, 
therefore,  the  sinful  soul  is  born  again  by  the  almighty  and 
supernatural  power  of  the  Spirit,  its  original  capacity  for 
the  knowledge  of  God  is  restored,  and  experiencing  in  the 
heart  the  power  of  God,  it  is  prepared  to  recognize  the  divine 
power  as  it  wrought  for  man’s  salvation  from  sin  objectively 
in  the  Person  and  work  of  Jesus  Christ. 

There  is  a  second  view  which  depresses  the  value  of 
Christian  Apologetics  because  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Wit¬ 
ness  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  This  view  is  totally  removed  from 
the  naturalistic  and  rationalistic  presuppositions  which  un- 

another  set  of  grounds.  Such  a  position  has  been  unfairly  attributed 
to  the  Ritschlian  theologians,  but  it  misrepresents  them.  What  was 
intended  was  the  assertion  that  so  called  “theoretic  knowledge”  is 
limited  to  the  sphere  of  science  so  that  it  cannot  encroach  upon  the 
sphere  of  the  objects  of  religious  faith.  But  quite  apart  from  the 
question  as  to  whether  knowledge  can  thus  be  limited,  the  Ritschlians 
were  unable  to  keep  faith  and  knowledge,  or  religion  and  philosophy,  in 
these  separate  spheres.  Their  phenomenalistic  theory  of  knowledge 
and  their  rejection  of  metaphysics  from  theology  necessarily  resulted 
in  a  reduction  of  the  content  of  faith  at  the  demand  of  their  philo¬ 
sophical  position.  Hence,  since  the  metaphysical  theology  reached 
back  into  the  New  Testament,  their  doctrine  of  religious  knowledge 
depressed  the  authority  of  Scripture  after  the  fashion  of  Rationalism, 
and  did  not  exalt  the  authority  of  Scripture  as  did  the  doctrine  of 
the  Witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  value-judgment  is  not  a  witness 
to  Scripture  but  an  instrument  for  sifting  out  the  truth  from  the 
Scripture.  Kaftan  attempted  to  vindicate  the  objective  character  of 
religious  knowledge  and  the  unity  of  truth  in  his  Wahrheit  der 
Christl.  Religion,  but  in  his  distinction  between  Opinion,  Faith,  and 
Knowledge,  he  brings  back  the  old  dualism.  Wobbermin,  Der  Christ- 
liche  Gottesglaube  in  seinem  V erhaltniss  zur  gegenwdrtigen  Philos - 
ophie,  has  perhaps  done  more  justice  to  the  task  of  Christian  Apolo¬ 
getics  than  any  other  of  the  Ritschlian  theologians.  It  has  an  “indirect 
use”  i.e.,  the  Christian  faith  objectively  may  be  rationally  defended;  but 
directly  in  the  genesis  of  saving  faith  reasons  are  of  no  value.  But 
Wobbermin’s  position  is  unsatisfactory.  The  faith  which  the  Holy 
Spirit  gives  is  not  a  blind  or  groundless  faith,  and  while  no  amount 
of  evidence  will  make  a  man  a  Christian,  it  does  not  follow  that  faith 
will  arise  apart  from  all  evidence. 


82 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


derlie  the  Ritschlian  position.  It  is  rooted  in  the  deeply 
evangelical  spirit  and  thorough  supernaturalism  character¬ 
istic  of  Calvin  and  all  the  Reformed  theologians.  It  is  due  to 
a  deep  sense  of  the  effects  of  sin  and  of  the  power  of  God’s 
grace.  We  refer  to  the  view  of  Drs.  Kuyper  and  Bavinck. 
They  argue  that,  because  saving  faith  is  due  to  the  Witness 
of  the  Spirit,  and  because  arguments  do  not  produce  the 
conviction  of  the  Christian,  therefore  rational  grounds  of 
faith  may  be  dispensed  with.  Apologetics  has  a  secondary 
place,  and  is  the  “fruit”  of  faith.  Bavinck29  seeks  to  show 
that  Christian  certitude  is  not  the  result  of  Christian  ex¬ 
perience  which  really  grows  out  of  it,  nor  of  arguments 
which  cannot  give  absolute  certitude  or  true  faith,  but  that  it 
simply  flows  from  faith  itself  which  springs  up  in  a  renewed 
heart  in  contact  with  Christ.  Kuyper30  has  fully  worked 
out  these  principles  in  his  profound  discussion  of  the  effects 
of  sin  and  of  regeneration  upon  our  knowledge  and  upon 
science.  The  unregenerate  and  the  regenerate  form  two 
classes,  distinct  in  kind  and  hence  totally  removed  the  one 
from  the  other  in  their  intellectual  processes  and  products. 
The  one  class  is  working  out  a  science  under  the  obscuring 
effects  of  sin,  the  other  under  the  illumination  of  the  Spirit 
in  regeneration.  No  arguments  can  lead  from  one  sphere 
to  the  other,  hence  no  arguments  for  the  science  of  the 
regenerate  can  be  regarded  as  universally  valid.  Apolo¬ 
getics  is  of  secondary  importance.  It  is  for  the  benefit  of 
the  Christian  and  for  the  purpose  of  defending  Christian 
faith,  and  not  for  the  purpose  of  grounding  it  or  serving 
under  the  Spirit’s  power  to  produce  faith. 

We  have  seen,  however,  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Witness 
of  the  Spirit  does  not  imply  this  attitude  to  the  arguments 
for  the  divine  origin  of  Christianity.  Saving  faith,  as  was 
said,  cannot  be  produced  by  arguments,  nor  indeed  by  the 
revelation  of  God  in  Christ,  because  faith  and  unbelief  de¬ 
pend  on  the  condition  of  the  heart,  and  the  soul  is  dead  in 

28  Bavinck,  Zekerheid  des  Geloofs 2,  pp  63ft. 

30  Kuyper,  Enclyclopaedie  der  heilige  Godgeleerdheid,  ii.,  Afd.  1, 
Hoofdst.  2  and  3,  pp.  52-129. 


WITNESS  OF  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  TO  THE  BIBLE  83 

sin.  The  ultimate  source  of  faith  is  the  power  of  the 
Spirit.  But  faith  is  not  blind,  and  rational  grounds  may 
enter  into  the  grounds  of  even  saving  faith,  and  without 
some  grounds  valid  for  the  subject,  it  cannot  arise.  In  the 
case  of  faith  in  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible,  no  doubt  the 
marks  of  God’s  hand  and  His  self-revelation  in  the  Scripture 
are  the  ultimate  grounds  of  faith.  But  they  are  neverthe¬ 
less  evidences  or  reasons  for  belief,  and  in  fully  recognizing 
these,  Drs.  Kuyper  and  Bavinck  admit  a  reason  for  faith 
which  is  after  all  universally  valid,  and  apart  from  the 
effects  of  sin  on  the  mind  would  be  recognized  as  such.  Con¬ 
sider  for  a  moment  Dr.  Kuyper’s  two  classes  of  men,  the 
regenerate  and  the  unregenerate.  Since  the  difficulty  with 
the  latter  and  that  which  discriminates  them  from  the 
former  is  subjective,  lying  in  the  state  of  the  heart,  it  follows 
that  the  reasons  for  the  faith  of  the  former  are  universally 
valid,  and  under  the  influence  of  the  Spirit  may  be  instru¬ 
mental  even  in  the  increase  of  saving  faith  in  the  world. 
If  the  trouble  with  the  unregenerate  is  in  their  own  heart, 
it  follows  that  there  is  nothing  the  matter  with  the  grounds 
of  faith.  In  addition  to  this,  so  far  as  their  subjective 
condition  is  concerned,  the  difference  is  not  absolute.  In 
the  one  class,  sin  has  destroyed  no  faculty  of  the  soul  and 
some  religious  sense  is  kept  alive  by  Common  Grace.  In 
the  other  class,  regeneration  has  not  removed  all  at  once 
the  effects  of  sin  on  the  heart  and  mind.  This  is  not  at  all 
to  be  understood  as  implying  that  the  transition  from  the 
unregenerate  class  to  the  regenerate  class  can  be  effected  by 
arguments.  This,  we  repeat,  can  be  brought  about  only  by 
the  Spirit  of  God  and  His  almighty  power.  It  is  only  in¬ 
tended  to  indicate  that  in  themselves  the  evidences  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  are  universally  valid,  and  that  even  in  regard  to  the 
production  of  saving  faith  they  play  an  important  part, 
while  as  grounds  of  Christian  certitude  of  the  divine  origin 
of  Christianity  and  the  Bible  they  are  indispensable,  since 
the  Witness  of  the  Spirit  is  the  efficient  cause,  and  not  one 
of  the  grounds  of  faith. 


84 


THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 


All  this,  however,  does  not  in  the  least  minimize  the  abso¬ 
lute  necessity  of  the  Witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  without 
whose  light  in  our  hearts  we  would  grope  in  darkness,  un¬ 
able  to  be  convinced  by  any  evidence,  and  too  blind  to  see 
the  glory  of  God  as  it  shines  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ 
and  in  the  pages  of  the  Word  of  God. 

Princeton.  C.  Wistar  Hodge. 


Date  Due 

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PRINTED 

IN  U,  S.  A. 

